


A Litter of Misfits

by Minni (Minnionette), Minnionette



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, BAMF Inuzuka, BAMF Women, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Dark Comedy, Disabled Character, F/M, For Want of a Nail, Gen, Inuzuka Clan, M/M, Strong Female Characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:34:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 39
Words: 321,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23714452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minnionette/pseuds/Minni, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minnionette/pseuds/Minnionette
Summary: Kingdoms rise and fall for the want of a nail. Uchiha Madara desperately wants Konoha to be part of his World Omelet of Peace – and has to crack a few eggs to make it, like a six year old nail named Inuzuka Tsume. Shimura Danzo doesn’t want a kingdom of his own – he wants the village for which he sacrifices everything to thrive. Tsume just wants to be wanted, and finds herself collecting a kingdom of strays, from a newborn Kakashi abandoned at birth by his mother, to a naked 3 year old Naruto seeking refuge in Tsume’s dog kennels in the dead of winter, and a cranky old man named Danzo.(Madara started it. Tsume regrets nothing, even if her taste is questionable. Danzo regrets himself into becoming a decent human being. Well, somewhat decent.)
Relationships: Inuzuka Tsume/Shimura Danzou
Comments: 84
Kudos: 153
Collections: In-depth Worldbuilding





	1. Delta years - Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this story December 28th, 2013. Believe it or not, I was the first person to tag Uchiha Kagami. Literally. I searched, and Misfits was the only story he was tagged in. I took the story down in 2016 as I felt very uncomfortable with the underage sex scenes, and needed to rework them. They're still present, and they're still graphic, but I feel like I have improved their value without being titillating. 
> 
> I have also edited and changed a lot of little things, over the years. And every time I think I've got all the mistakes ironed out, I find more. >:( So I'm posting the chapters one at a time, giving them another once-over for errors. Alas, my inner editor will be the death of me...
> 
> The character tags don't include everyone who makes an appearance; only those who play a significant role in the story. It just might take a hundred thousand words or so before a character playing a significant role finally makes an appearance.

The child’s bloody footprints in the disturbed snow looked silver and haunting beneath the moonlight, side by side with the large paw prints. Her eyes traced them, her nose tracked the scents beyond what her eyes saw. The child had followed the old bitch, squeezed through the broken slats in her fence, trekked through the snow, and ducked into her kennels.

It was cold – the kind of cold that Konoha only saw every hundred years or so – and frost was so thick on the trees that they looked like they had been dipped in silver. It was a rare sight, breathtaking in its stark beauty, usually only seen in the northern countries, like Frost and Lightening, and Inuzuka Tsume stood in the midst of the cold, dressed only in a man’s long-sleeved nightshirt that fell to her knees and a pair of open-toed sandals. Her toes were numb, and her breath formed a freezing mist. Snow had fallen earlier that day, but its surface had been completely scuffed up by a laughing Kiba long before the sun set.

Konoha had lost power with the clearing dusk and the bitter dropping temperatures. She was sure it had something to do with the cold and some malfunctioning power lines somewhere, but hadn’t really noticed it until her nine year old daughter and three year old son had dragged her from her cozy nest of blankets. So she had made a fire in the relatively unused fireplace, heated up some hot cocoa with a water-kettle hanging over the fireplace, and settled her two pups down with various pillows and blankets to keep warm for the rest of the night. ( _“Yay! Hot cocoa and camp night!”)_

Hana and Kiba weren’t her only puppies. After careful crossbreeding of the ninken who managed to survive the Kyuubi attack and wild wolves that Tsume had more-or-less kidnapped from several different countries and half-tamed, she had finally managed to birth a successful litter of eleven strong nin-puppies five weeks previous, although she hadn’t been able to save their mother. She was finally able to assign actual nin puppies to her clan’s children, who had been without any partners for over three years, finally be able to help some of her kinswomen replace their dead partners.

After ensuring her children were snuggled down, Tsume left the nice, warm house for the kennels, intent on bringing the puppies inside for further protection, so poor Hana didn’t have to brave the cold for their early morning feeding.

Two in the morning was so _not_ the best time to find her kennels reeking of the Kyuubi - the same stench that had clung to the different body parts of over fifty Inuzuka women and a few hundred ninken that she had had to identify three years ago. _(“This was all we could find. There were many who were too… disintegrated to identify. But, uh, you can sniff out the scraps, right? If you need any help, Douga could fetch a bucket and shovel. And some sponges.”)_

The only thing that kept her from charging into the kennels with her claws and fangs bared was the lack of alarm coming from her kennels. That, and those tiny, bloody, footprints.

They were the same size as Kiba’s.

Grateful that she had left Kuromaru babysitting her children, Tsume pushed away the last of the killing intent and increased the chakra in her nose. She took in the scents surroundings her, cataloguing and dismissing familiar odors. From a great distance away, five Uchihas were congregating. That wouldn’t normally bother her, except the distinct odor of Uchiha – this one a recently-appointed ANBU who antagonized her frequently enough – was fresh outside her gate. She had a feeling that the congregating five would soon be at her doorstep. And they would not be alone.

ROOT was also on the move, according to her nose.

She hurried the rest of the way into her kennels, deliberately kicking snow to obliterate the bloody footsteps, and heard the sounds of eating upon her entry. She paused to secure the barn door shut prevent the cold from following after. The kennels was actually a barn that had been partitioned off generations ago, split into multiple little stalls and a few special rooms to accommodate a vast number of dogs.

She walked past the stalls – all but six were empty – and the different storage and holdings rooms – also all empty, before turning left at the very back of the barn, into the large end room where a single lantern cast long shadows. Nagumi, who was half-blind and half-deaf and completely toothless, was nestled in a pile of hay and curled up in a ball. Eleven puppies in various states of sleepy movements cuddled against her.

In the squirming mass of puppies, half buried beneath the hay himself, was a naked, and rather ravenous, blond three year old. His face was smeared with the mush she had prepared for Nagumi. Two mouthfuls of mush later, he realized he had been spotted. He froze in mid-swallow when he saw Tsume, one bony fist filled with mush and raised halfway to his face.

The soles of his feet were raw and open like sliced meat. There were dark hollows under his eyes, and three stripes on either cheek, almost like whiskers, almost invisible beneath the mush.

Killing intent unexpectedly flared out of her control as she looked at the toddler’s gaunt face. _He was eating dog food!_

He quickly sprang from the mass of puppies as the dish of dog food tilted out of his clumsy grasp and landed upside down with a goopy squish. He crouched down and feral blue eyes flashed around. After a quick second of hesitation, he attempted to dart past her. Used to the escaping antics of three year olds, Tsume easily nabbed him by clamping a firm hand around his arm.

She was _not_ used to three year olds snarling as they sank surprisingly sharp milk-teeth into her arm. Instead of cuffing him like her first instincts screamed at her to do ( _kill kill KILL **KILL THE KYUUBI**_ ) she simply pried him loose and shoved him away from the exit with a sandaled foot. Crying now instead of snarling, sickly and lost and frightened, the child scrambled back to Nagumi and the puppies. The puppies were too sleepy to give much notice. Nagumi raised her head and turned milky-white eyes to Tsume. Nagumi growled in warning. _My puppy. I found him. Mine_.

Tsume pulled the killing intent back, and felt the cold seeped through her nightshirt. She watched as the child cried silently and rubbed at his teary eyes. “He’s awfully scrawny,” she told Nagumi as his gaze drifted hungrily to the upside-down bowl of dog food. Children shouldn’t have every rib so clearly outlined. She approached the child – he retreated further back, his feet leaving new bloody trails on the cold ground. He hid behind Nagumi, snot dribbling from his nose into her fur.

Tsume tugged her nightshirt off as Nagumi licked the boy’s face clean and whined again. _He was cold and hungry. He followed me home._

“And I suppose you think that means you can keep him, huh? Here, kid,” she said, holding the nightshirt out. “You need it more than me.” Even without the nightshirt, she wasn’t as naked as the boy. She still wore sandals, after all. He flinched at her voice though, his tiny hands fisting in Nagumi’s thick fur. One of the puppies whined as it climbed over Nagumi’s back and tumbled into the boy.

Tsume gently tossed the nightshirt so it landed in front of Nagumi. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” Tsume lilted her voice into a croon, just like how she spoke to one of the Nara deer last year when she had found it caught in a hunter’s snare outside of the Nara Forest. And the wolves she kept trapping and keeping. And the Suna genin team three months ago who had wondered why the hell Tsume was apologizing for accidentally ensnaring their sensei in her wolf trap. ( _“Ah, quit your bitching, Sasori-kuni. You’re coming out of this trap in a much better condition than the last sensei I accidentally snared. I’m still banned for life from any craft stores in Fire, and it’s not like the sand wolves appreciate glitter.”)_

Eh, cornered prey was cornered prey. “I’m here for you. I won’t hurt you.” Nagumi pawed at the nightshirt before catching it in her maw and flipping it with a toss of her head to cover the kid.

The cold made the hair on Tsume’s skin stand on end and her nipples pebble. But the anger – he was _naked_ , and eating _dog food_ – warmed her against shivering. She straightened as the Uchiha scents invaded her compound. The child pulled the nightshirt over his head as he sank lower out of sight. _(“If I can’t see you Mommy, then you can’t see me!”)_ She bit back a snarl as she remembered Kiba giggling from beneath the blankets in front of the fire a few minutes earlier.

Tsume exited the large room, unmuted her siren seal just enough to distract, and was half-way down the hall when the door crashed open. Five Uchiha, including Pencil-Dick himself, filled the breadth of the entrance. Their Sharingan eyes were red and spinning but their movement forward halted at the sight of her. And then Sharingan eyes began looking everywhere else. Tsume was under no illusion whatsoever that she was a beautiful woman – she was built more like a pear-shaped brick and less like an hourglass, and her face was more scary than it was handsome – but she was female and naked and artificially alluring.

She smiled, just a hint of fang showing, as she spread her arms above her head to either side of the hall. It blocked the Uchiha from being able to walk past her – and brought attention to her breasts. They weren’t the most impressive, especially after two rounds of breastfeeding, but hey, in her wide and varied experience, most men weren’t all that picky about bare breasts. “My,” she said, her voice smoky with the promise of pleasure, “and here I was just thinking of how _cold_ my _bed_ is.”

Uchiha Fugaku pinched the bridge of his nose, and made sure that he kept his gaze resolutely trained on a spot above her left ear. They had sex once, years ago. It had ended in disaster, and was the perfect example of how historical attempts by the Uchiha and Inuzuka trying to get along generally resulted in unmitigated disaster, and with both parties refusing to own up to any role they may have played in the creation of such. The clans just had that special touch with each other. “Really?” he muttered in a low voice. “It’s too damn cold and too damn early to do this, Tsume.”

Uchiha Ringo hid a yawn. “ _Any_ time is too damn early to deal with Tsume. _If_ we’re going to wish for the impossible when it comes to the Inuzuka, I’d like to request that Aunt Natsumi grow up. It’s going to eventually happen any day now, right?”

“After ninety-plus years, that old dog isn’t going to be learning any new tricks.” Squaring his shoulders and clearing his throat, Fugaku managed to look very stern and unaffected by lust, especially since he had been dragged out of a warm bed and the warmer, much more welcoming embrace of his wife less than thirty minutes ago. “Inuzuka Tsume, it has come to our attention that you are harboring the jinchuuriki. The law prohibits ninja clans from interacting with the jinchuuriki until such a time as he enters the Academy.”

Tsume sniffed and tossed her hair. There was another person approaching – his scent was dark and made her insides curl with anticipation. “There’s nothing here but puppies and old bitches. In fact, I was thinking that one of those old bitches – with the use of honey in all the right places – could warm my bed tonight. I was hoping for a good fucking – not to be fucked over. Although it is colder than balls outside. So you all probably have blue balls.” She grinned. “I can take care of that!” The Uchiha scents had shifted; attraction was giving way to desire under the influence of her seal. Ringo always did admire the way of Tsume’s hips.

Fugaku twitched, and pinched the bridge of his nose again. “It was reported to us that the jinchuuriki entered this building. We will have to search.”

She slowly slid one foot up the wall, and then rested it knee-high on a kennel slate. Anger made her mouth taste of blood. _They **knew** a naked three year old boy wandered through the snow. Did they follow the bloody footsteps, too? _And the fuckers couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it until an old, toothless dog herded the boy into some empty kennels, to eat mush and sleep in a pile of hay.

In Tsume’s world, problems were solved with a) sex, b) violence, and/or c) judicious application of cute puppies and great food. And it was definitely a problem to allow the police into her kennels. So Plan A it was. All she had to do was stall. She dropped her right hand between her legs and languidly stroked as a sweet smile crossed her face. “Excellent idea. You should start with me – a full body cavity search. I might have, um, weapons hiding somewhere.” She palmed her breasts. “Kunoichi always have something hiding in our cleavage!” _That_ made all eyes but Fugaku’s focus exclusively on her. He just looked annoyed and suspicious. She tried to make her voice sound sexy, instead of creepy. “I do so love a man in uniform.”

“You don’t even _have_ any decent cleavage to hide anything!” Then Fugaku cleared his throat, annoyed and determined to stay on the subject and not allow himself to be distracted by her antics. “If you do not cooperate-”

“Will you spank me?” Tsume cut in eagerly. Her toes curled as a shiver – not of cold, nor of pleasure – raced up and down her spine as the dark scent invaded the kennels, as soft and as quiet as shadows. _Eagerness._ “Ooooh, do you _promise the cuffs_?”

“Enough, gentleman.” The police stiffened at the new voice, and then parted, turning to face the latest arrival. As their attention shifted from her onto a much more immanent threat, she instantly muted her seal. Excitement joined anger and anticipation, and she felt her heart skip a beat. Shimura Danzo’s face was cloaked in the darkness, but she didn’t have to see his expression to know that it was cold and deadly. He never liked it when she used the siren seal around Konoha. He liked the Uchiha clan even less. “ _I_ shall handle it from here.”

“Sir-” Uchiha Yahiko’s voice halted when Danzo raised his left hand dismissively. He stepped forward.

“The Inuzuka compound and kennels cannot be entered without the Clan Head’s expressed permission or a warrant. It appears that you have neither.”

Uchiha Fugaku didn’t smell intimidated by Danzo – not like the other four Uchiha, whose pores were drenched with fear. “We know that the jinchuuriki entered Inuzuka-kun’s kennels. We’re here as officers ensuring that the law is upheld.” 

Anger boiled again as she imagined the Uchiha heartlessly following the trail of a small child, not bothering to hurry because the cold needed time to _work_. Clearly, she was going to have to have Aunt Natsumi “get lost” in the Uchiha District again. Tsume raised her right hand back over her head and smiled at them, hiding her true feelings behind a smug lust. She was Clan Head. In this capacity, Uchiha Fugaku was acting as police, not Clan Head. Her authority trumped his when it came to her territory. “Just puppies and old bitches,” she said again. “And a couple of asses, but _you_ know who you are.”

Danzo stepped past the Uchiha, his movements slow. His eye didn’t leave Tsume’s face. “I’m well aware of the law’s details, Uchiha-san. I wrote the damn thing myself. Tell me – do you hear any barking ninken?” He paused a moment for them to pay attention to something other than the bold, naked woman who had spread her knees to them. “Growling? Snarling? Anything that may indicate an intruder as unwelcome as the jinchuuriki has invaded the premises?” The wolves might’ve snarled and growled, but they were too busy trying not to garner attention in the presence of the Kyuubi’s odor. They knew where they ranked on the food chain, and it wasn’t very high in comparison. “I thought not. Do not waste your time and effort in making enemies where you least need them. _I_ shall stay… and discuss with Inuzuka-san the parameters of the law.” His voice took on a hard edge – the sort of edge that meant that the discussion would be as severe as the elder. Tsume allowed the smile to drop from her face and her shoulders to tense.

She remained like that, even when the Uchiha – smelling rather smug, the bastards – departed from her compound. Danzo stepped into her personal space.

“Really?” Danzo asked her in exasperation as he traced the long, severe, crooked scar that marred her abdomen, just below the umbilicus. It stood thick and red against her skin, still looking recent though it was three and a half years old, because she had torn it open twice in two months before the Fourth Hokage barred her from field missions until it healed completely, and then threatened to slap multiple seals on her if she didn’t obey or if she attempted to emotionally blackmail him via Kushina-chan. “Sex is not the solution for this problem.”

She barred her teeth at him. “I was outnumbered, and they didn’t look like they’d go away if I gave them some hot chocolate and a puppy to romp with. Besides, I only needed to stall them.” Her skin tickled as he continued to trace the scar, applying pressure steadily to push her aside without resorting to the brutal strength she knew he had no problem using – even against fellow Konoha nin, and especially against her.

“Your overemotional irrationality never ceases to amaze me with all its boldness.” Danzo’s hand stilled as his voice dropped into a dangerous whisper. His unique dark scent coiled, like a viper preparing a strike. “Move by your choice or my will – it makes no difference to me.”

Tsume dropped an arm and sullenly shifted her weight. Danzo’s left eye narrowed before he planted his hand against her hip and shoved her further out of his way. His bandaged right arm brushed against her nipple as he continued forward. She trailed behind, hackles rising as he entered the last room.

The jinchuuriki had bundled himself tightly in her nightshirt and was curled up fast asleep against Nagumi’s flank. He was covered in snoring puppies. His face was still smeared with the mush and now plastered with straw, and his breath rattled and wheezed. His feet poked out from beneath the puppies – they still looked like two raw slabs of meat, but at least they didn’t bleed anymore.

“What have we here?” Danzo asked with a blank voice.

Tsume stepped beside him. “Puppies!” she declared with a brittle smile, draping her arm over his shoulders.

Danzo raised an incredulous eyebrow at her. “There’s a fox in the midst of your dogs.”

She walked two fingers up his bandaged right arm. “I only see puppies,” she whispered. She tried to match his dangerous whisper from earlier. “The jinchuuriki’s tears smelled _just_ _like my son’s_.” She slid her fingers across his chest and then pulled him around to face her. “Why is a _child_ wandering this cold night without clothes, so hungry and desperate that he’s reduced to scarfing down dog food?”

His expression was closed but amusement lit his eye. “Reduced? Your ninken eat better than most of ROOT.”

ROOT was also a problem. A big stick-in-the-ass heartless problem that she was trying to fix with judicious application of puppies and good food, since violence wasn’t going to solve it and sex so far has been an unsuccessful, albeit pleasurable, distraction. Still, she refused to let Danzo digress. “You know the ANBU still watch outside my house. The fucker was _in_ my compound. He’s stinking up the place.”

He resumed tracing the scar on her abdomen – softly now, little flicks of his fingertips that made her skin tingle. “Yes. And he will remain there, because the Uchiha don’t suspect.” He brushed his mouth against the shell of her ear and his breath tickled as he whispered. “They _know_ where the demon is to be found.”

Which meant that more asses would be going to be knocking on her door in the morning. Oh joy.

“Then we’ll just move the puppies.” She turned away from Danzo and stepped out of his reach as a thought visibly crossed his face for the first time _– we?_ “Anyway, can’t have them out in the cold. I’m not losing any of my litter.”

The child woke up at her approach, and began kicking and screaming when she scooped him and five puppies into her arms. Nagumi growled again. “Keep it to yourself,” Tsume told the old bitch. Then her fingers twisted into several seals before casting the calming genjutsu, specifically designed by her clan for unruly puppies. The child went still, his face looking blank and tired.

“Really?” Danzo’s voice was dry again.

“At least I’m not solving this problem with sex,” she said, juggling everyone to fit comfortably in her arms. “Can you grab the rest?” She was surprised when he draped his winter cloak around her shoulders. His expression was amused as he tucked the folds around her. “What’s with the sudden interest in protecting my nonexistent modesty?”

He leaned back. “ANBU will not be distracted by your breasts if you’re holding the jinchuuriki in front of them.” He shifted the folds so two puppy heads poked out; the remaining bulk would be completely mistaken as other canine lumps. Then he stooped and carefully gathered up another five. Tail tick-tocking slowly, Nagumi grabbed the eleventh by its scruff and followed after Tsume, who blew out the lantern without slowing.

The wind had picked up as Tsume skipped across the yard from kennels to house, trying to keep her feet above the snow. Danzo didn’t seem bothered in the least. She shouldered through the door directly into the kitchen – another lit lantern was there, but Tsume didn’t pause. “In the living room,” she told Danzo over her shoulder.

Hana and Kiba were curled up and asleep in their piles of cushions and blankets on the floor in front of the fire. Kuromaru was silent as he raised his head from where he had commandeered the couch. Kiba had kicked his blankets off and was sleeping belly-down on top of her favorite fluffy cushion. Nagumi circled in front of the fire a few times and settled down on the old rug. She released the puppy, which whined a few times before flopping over one of Nagumi’s gigantic paw and falling asleep.

Hana woke up momentarily. “Mom?” she asked, bleary eyes shifting from Danzo to Tsume. Hana wasn’t the least bit bothered by Tsume’s apparent nudity. Or by Danzo.

“I’m only bringing in the pups from the cold. Back to sleep – you still have the Academy in the morning.”

Hana snuggled deeper in her nest. Danzo was silent as Tsume arranged first her armful of puppies and then his, around Nagumi. The jinchuuriki, still under the influence of the genjutsu, was also fast asleep, and hung from her arm like a broken doll. She paused a moment to rearrange him against her shoulder, like Kiba sometimes slept when she carried him to bed. The rotten little demon had the nerve to drool on her.

Tsume’s voice was a whisper as she removed the kettle from the fire. “The puppies will need feeding in just a few hours.” Danzo followed her back to the kitchen. With the bare light from the lantern, boiling water from the kettle, and some snow outside, she filled a basin to clean the jinchuuriki’s face and hands. The child stirred a few times as Tsume fussed over his feet, and then she shot Danzo a withering glare when he told her dismissively not to bother, that the feet would heal in no time thanks to the demon. Out of defiance, she cleaned and bandaged them anyway.

“ _You’re_ a demon,” she muttered as she carried the child back to the living room. She hesitated as she hovered beside Hana. “What’s his name?” she asked, feeling as bewildered as she probably looked.

Danzo’s lengthy silence was even more telling than his scent, before he finally whispered, “Uzumaki Naruto.”

Tsume winced, but managed to keep the volume of her voice down. “Uzumaki, huh? Wait – I think I slept with his mother at one time.”

He sighed in exasperation. “Who _haven’t_ you slept with, Tsume?”

She ignored that jibe. “Red hair? Loud mouth and explosive temper? You know: the Red Hot Habanero?” A growl entered her voice. “My genin teammate that I shared my blankets with during the Second War and our circus days?” The person she did her best not to remember since that date of fire and death, because it hurt hurt hurt to think of everyone she loved and lost.

She really ought to know that deliberately forgetting things generally came back around to bite her in the butt.

“An uncanny coincidence, I’m afraid. Uzumaki is a common name from Whirlpool.”

Tsume didn’t know why he bothered being deceitful with her. He knew she could smell it. She focused on waking up Hana again as Danzo stoked the fire with a few extra logs. “Here. This is Naruto – a stray orphan who was sleeping with the pups for warmth. Make sure he knows where to go to the bathroom when he wakes up. I’ve got the milk all ready for the pups when they’re hungry, but you can feed this one cup ramen. The kettle on the fire will do fine for the ramen. Kuromaru will stay with you in case you need anything.” Kuromaru gave Tsume a dirty look, which she ignored. “Good night, sweetie.”

Hana, used to Kiba crawling in with her when he had nightmares and even more used to the random orphans that Tsume brought home, barely blinked before tucking Naruto’s head under her chin and folding the blanket tightly around them. Her nose wrinkled. “He stinks.”

“He _was_ rolling around in the kennels.”

“No’m. Like fire and fox and fish cakes.”

Tsume ignored how the pit of her stomach dropped. She hoped she wasn’t making the wrong decision. “He needs a bath, but nothing we can do anything about right now. I’m sleeping in my bed tonight. Drop all the pups with me before you leave for the Academy.”

“Mmmm’kay.”

Danzo followed Tsume through the living room and up the stairs. No lantern burned in her room – the window curtains were pulled back though, letting the moonlight stream through the large picture windows. Her bedroom wasn’t as warm as the living room, but still not freezing – the chimney ran up through the room, warmth radiating from the stones. Outside her windows was a large oak tree, and Tsume knew that Uchiha Daimaru watched from its barren branches. She grinned and turned her back to the windows as she drew Danzo forward with his hand in her own. Only the Byakugen could read her lips through the back of her head. “I need to talk to you, but I also need to distract that ANBU from our discussion and from any presence of my puppies in the living room. Can’t have him knowing about Naruto.” The name played off her tongue – it sounded kinder than _jinchuuriki_. “So, on to Plan A.

“An old favorite of yours.”

“Yes.” She slid his robe off his shoulders and let it drop to the floor, then stroked her hands across his exposed chest. She rolled his nipples gently as she nibbled at his collar bones. His breathing and expression didn’t change, but his scent shifted. “I’d go down on you, but you always bitch about me talking with my mouth full.” Her hands skimmed lower and dipped into his trousers. At his age – and how the moonlight highlighted all sixty years he had survived in the harsh shinobi world – his arousal didn’t immediately burn as hotly as hers, nor did his erection harden quickly, but his arousal had an early start – stirring the moment touched her in the kennels. It only took ten years of effort to condition a positive sexual response from him.

Danzo drew her hands out of his waist band and swiftly turned her away from the window, pushing her against her dresser.

“Lift me up. I’ll be just outside of that guy’s view.”

Danzo wordlessly hoisted her up and deposited her on the small chest of drawers. Her hand knocked the hairbrush clattering onto the floor. Their profiles would still be seen through the window, but she was right – as she parted her knees before Danzo and arched backwards, head touching the wall, her face out of view. Her voice was bitter. “And when Daimaru checks with his brother before his _captain_ in the morning, he can honestly report that not a word was spoken of the jinchuuriki – and that animal Inuzuka woman ruts off-missions like the whore she is _on_ missions. Bah. Pencil-Dick already knows that, though.”

Danzo silently dropped to his knees and pressed his mouth against her scar. He tongued it as his good hand slid up her torso and cupped her left breast. Tsume threaded a hand in his graying hair. She sighed. “I know you think people are irrational, overemotional creatures.” Danzo’s teeth nipped at her scar – a reminder of how irrational and emotional he _knew_ her to be. Then he moved down and turned his head away from the windows to kiss the inside of her thigh.

“Does this have a point?” he whispered against her skin, before he nipped her.

“Do you think my ninken are weapons?”

His eye flickered up towards her. His voice was a murmur. “The point?” He nipped her thigh again as he tweaked her nipple. Tsume rolled her hips as anticipation shivered up and down her spine. She was beginning to feel her arousal burn with the same intensity as the anger that still boiled beneath her skin.

“Of course you do. And, like all decent shinobi, my ninken are domesticated.”

“If by domesticated, you mean that shinobi are housebroken and don’t pee on the rug – then, yes, your ninken are that. I don’t know why you bother with being subtle.” As if to prove that everything about this situation was blunt, he tongued her clitoris. She squeaked at the sudden suction, knees momentarily clamping tight around his head before he dropped his hand from her breast and pushed one knee away. Then he slid a finger inside and stroked. She gasped and arched forward, before dropping her head out of sight again. Her fingers tightened in his hair.

“My ninken, wild wolves – they’re both predators. Both deadly.” She undulated her hips against his mouth and hand; he allowed her. “The difference between my ninken and wolves in the wild is simple – my ninken are loyal to clan and Konoha _because_ they’re domesticated. Konoha has fed them, loved them, played with them, proven her own loyalty to them, and they see that Konoha is a friend, someone worth fighting for. _They can be aimed._ Wild wolves only lunge and snarl at the hand attempting to free and feed them.” And she should know – and so did he. One of her Inuzuka clanswomen accidentally released two wild wolves from the kennels last year, and it had taken her two eldest sons and one very sad-about-being-bait Pakkun to recapture them. Danzo had looked onward and yelled out tips to her two sons.

Pleasure warmed Tsume’s body better than the anger did earlier, her fingertips tingling and her toes curling. Her body knew the difference between fight and flight (insofar as she understood _flight_ ) – but fight and fuck felt one and the same to her, especially when _Danzo_ knelt between her knees and was skillfully stroking her pleasure. She would never hold a candle to the level of sheer power that lay beneath his skin, but no one else alive could say that Konoha’s War Hawk had knelt before them and his face buried between their thighs.

His fingers squelched as he withdrew them. He stood after she gently tugged on his hair, and she undid and dropped his trousers to his ankles; he let them pool on the floor. She almost wished she could see the face of the ANBU. Danzo’s erection didn’t jut upward as it did the first time fifteen years ago when he viciously fucked her in a brothel, but it was no less impressive. She grinned as Danzo pulled her one-armed off the dresser to stand in front of him - age hadn’t lessened his strength, nor the size of his cock. He turned his face away from the window again as she lifted a single leg high and wrapped it around his waist. “I’ve known this about the Inuzuka ninken before you were even born. What does it have to do with the jinchuuriki?”

Then he slid into her. Tsume sucked in a deep breath, but he didn’t give her time to adjust to his size before setting a rigorous pace that slammed her against the edge of the dresser so hard she knew there were going to be vertical bruises come morning. His hand went back to her breast. The tingling moved from her fingertips up her limbs and made her insides quiver. She was now in line with the picture windows – she turned her face towards his throat and spoke again. “Your jinchuuriki – that weapon you want to reinforce Konoha’s forces – is going _feral_.” She hissed as he twisted her nipple in warning as his thrusting became more brutal. Anger rippled in his scent. Her pleasure only burned and tightened like a coil within. “I saw his eyes tonight. You _cannot_ aim a wild wolf, you fool.” She mouthed his neck and chose her next words in challenge. “Are you _trying_ to finish what the Kyuubi started three years ago?”

(She wondered what it must it look like from the remote viewpoint of her tree – an old, crippled man and a young, lithe woman coupling in the moonlight?)

“Don’t you _fucking_ dare…!” His hand slid from her breast to her throat – the uncomfortable press of palm against trachea and fingers curling against carotid arteries reminded her that he had no problems and plenty of experience crushing windpipes amidst coitus. “ _What_ do you _want_?” She heard the undercurrent of impatient anger (smelled it much more though, felt it as he hammered her body into jelly), but he was still otherwise stoic. 

She dropped her hands from his hair and lightly dragged her nails over his buttocks. She traced her fingers in the sweat that was beginning to dampen his spine. “Your weapon is a mere puppy – I can domesticate him before it’s too late – before you lose him utterly.” _Before he ever has to wander naked and barefoot and alone through the snow again._ She gasped against his skin now, little pitching cries ripping from her throat with each brutal thrust. Danzo was hitting that spot deep inside that was absolutely delicious. _(“I can take every one of your weapons and use them against you. Even your own body.” “You can take my body, but you’ll never have my dogs. Their loyalty is to me. I am queen alpha bitch. Konoha is **my** territory.”)_ She clawed at his broad shoulders as the pleasure coiled tighter. A sheen of sweat made his body glisten. She felt the vibrations of his heart pounding in his chest.

Danzo’s laugh was low and mocking. “Why?”

 _My puppy. I found him. Mine._ Tsume was the clan’s alpha bitch – _all_ puppies, no matter the mother or species, were _hers_. “He followed me home, and I’m going to keep him. Haven’t you heard? Whore-bitch Tsume likes to gather strays.”

“I _know_. I started that damn rumor myself.” He kissed her harshly, and since he didn’t have any poison in his mouth, she sank her teeth into his bottom lip. He fisted her hair and yanked her head back. His hips stilled but he remained sheathed deep inside. She whined and tried to move her pelvis against his. The coil was tight and she was right on the edge – just a little more would shatter her.

He trailed her throat with his bleeding lip, smearing her with his blood and marking her with his own scent. Fifteen years of fucking with (and over, the _butthead_ ) the Inuzuka alpha bitch taught him how the clan kunoichi marked their territory without pissing everywhere like their dogs. His face buried against her throat and his hand dropped from her hair. Lips unseen from the window, he whispered harshly, “Your puppy, _my weapon_.” For all that Danzo looked down his nose at emotions, he wasn’t free of them. He stank of desire, anger, frustration, resentment, and impatience. He thrust twice more at the delicious place – rolled the hood of her clitoris between his fingers – and sent her slamming into her orgasm.

Pleasure ripped through her, muscles quivering and limbs twitching. She gasped, more quiet in orgasm than in intercourse. He prolonged the sweet high notes of her pleasure with the roll of his pelvis against her own – her hands tingled and her head buzzed. He held back his own climax as her pleasure ebbed. “Oh.” She cupped his face with her hands, and slowly lapped the blood off his lip.

He responded with a gentle kiss, and she felt her breath hitch in surprise. It was rare that he allowed kissing, and almost unheard of that the kiss should be so soft and sweet – she wondered if he was as angry as she at the boy’s condition. Eh, he was probably just mad at Tsume doing what Inuzuka Tsume did best – mess up so badly that she inexplicably wound up all the better for it. “You’re a gentleman tonight.” She blinked back tears. “What’s the occasion?”

He sighed against her lips. “It’s two-thirty in the morning. I’m too fucking _tired_ for my usual level of sadism.” Danzo bucked against her – a sharp thrust that smashed her painfully against the dresser – and exhaled sharply as warmth flooded her insides and endorphins flooded her nostrils, temporarily blocking out the Kyuubi’s odor. His body relaxed against hers, heart slowing as his breathing calmed. The tension was out of his shoulders, but the anger lingered. She sniffed and settled both feet firmly on the ground as his limp cock slipped out of her. She much preferred the pungent musk of sex over the acrid of anger.

“Gosh. You _are_ tired.”

He mumbled against her skin. “And that was before the orgasm.” His hand tightened protectively at her hip – and then slid around to trace the scar. Perhaps _that_ was why he instigated the kiss.

“You haven’t been sleeping well.”

“I anticipate that won’t be a problem as soon as I get back to my bed.”

She waved her hand at the window, careful not to focus her eyes on the ANBU, but didn’t bother to hide her lips. Daimaru could kiss her ass. He’d been lusting after it as long as Ringo had. “You can’t go out in that cold. Your cock will shrivel up and fall off. I’d be forced to seek mediocre pleasure from Pencil-Dick Uchiha himself.”

For all that his body was as fit and trim at sixty years as it had been at forty-five (minus a few slightly cumbersome limbs), Danzo was not light. He sagged more heavily into her arms. “And what a deplorable tragedy that would be, especially for his wife, and for what little decency remains of your reputation. Hmm, especially considering what happened with your last attempt to bed Fugaku… how many years ago? Ten?”

Tsume grimaced. She had been successful in bedding Fugaku, in that they were both naked in bed together. She had asked Fugaku when he was going to start, he had said his cock was already in her, and she had declared him too small to notice the difference. And then Pencil-Dick did something with his Sharingan, so it was harder than usual to remember the exact details. She was almost positive that actual sex never happened, the bastard. “Twelve years.”

Danzo’s face relaxed from its stern lines into something softer, more natural. She tried to pretend that her heart wasn’t fluttering with fondness. “But if I stay here, I may be subjected to your evil bitch-whore wiles in the morning.”

“A terrible risk – I personally feel that morning wood shouldn’t be wasted – but one that I’m afraid you’re going to have to deal with.” She smiled and turned her face away from the window and pressed her lips against his throat. She licked the sweat beading on his skin. “Besides, who wants their tired ass hauled home by emotionally-constipated ROOT asking embarrassing questions about your love bites? Over to my bed, now. You can sleep here safe.”

“Indeed.” Tsume would smell any intruders long before he would sense them. In that, he was safer with her than in his own home. Tsume helped Danzo pull up his trousers and gently tucked his wilted cock inside. He was painfully sensitive after sex, so she kept her touching to a minimum. As he stumbled towards the bed, she stretched in front of the picture windows. “Such a cocktease,” Danzo muttered as he casually tossed her multiple pillows to the floor – he preferred resting on a completely flat surface. Tsume focused on her reflection in the window and trailed a hand through her trimmed pubic curls. They glistened from her lubrication and his semen. She made a show of licking her fingers clean, tongue suggestively swirling around each digit. _Take that,_ she thought viciously at the ANBU and the Uchiha clan in general when she yanked the curtains shut.

As the warm glow of her orgasm lessened, the winter chill settled in her bones. Her right arm and fingers ached and burned. It was an old, familiar pain of an old and familiar injury. She picked Danzo’s robe off the floor and wrapped herself in it – she liked surrounding herself with his scent – before joining him under the covers. She turned her back to him and nestled her head on the one pillow he allowed to remain, and _of course_ it would be the flattest pillow. He scooted close and spooned her. “Your feet are cold,” he whispered into her hair. “They’re _always_ cold.”

Tsume slid her hand over to meet his. He wasn’t an affectionate man – he certainly didn’t believe in _that_ any more than emotions – but he was usually too sleepy after sex in his older years to put up much of a fight. She twined her fingers with his, and rested their joined hands against her scar.


	2. Delta years - Chapter Two

Hatake Kakashi personally knew just how cold it was outside, even though his body burned and sweat soaked his skin and hair. He had just spent the last two days and nights traveling nonstop through the snow and cold to reach his village, despite the flaming, weeping agony in his side. Well, okay, he traveled nonstop _because_ of the flaming, weeping agony in his side. It seemed kinda silly to park his ass on a stump somewhere and rest when he had a very comfortable bed in a cozy apartment, just waiting for him. A man should only have to suffer so much, after all.

The ANBU headquarters where he stopped long enough to briefly report his mission’s results had only been a hair warmer, especially when he decided that it was in his best interest to avoid his worrywart of a younger brother. Still, it didn’t quite seem to hit home in his hazy mind just _exactly, precisely,_ how cold it was, until the realization that he lacked hot water to wash his wounds because the water pipes were completely frozen.

Now that he was forced to consider such, it _did_ seem colder inside his apartment than outside where dawn would be breaking shortly.

“Told you that you should’ve gone right for the hospital,” Pakkun grumbled from where he watched Kakashi, his head resting between his two paws. After a moment, he added, “And so did Frog and Raccoon and Chipmunk and Robin and everyone else who saw you.”

“I’m hungry,” Kakashi replied. He swayed and clutched at the kitchen sink.

“The hospital has backup generators producing heat, kitchen staff producing food, and antibiotics. Sounds like a great deal that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. ”

“But… but it’s hospital food.” Kakashi tried opening the taps again, just in case the ice might have dislodged. Nothing. “I’d rather eat dog food.”

“Well, can’t really blame you for that one. Tsume-chan’s dog food is delicious, far better than the swill they feed wounded shinobi. Nagumi-sensei said that the hospital deliberately feeds disgusting food to shinobi as an encouragement to get well sooner and leave faster.”

Kakashi twiddled with the taps a few more times. He was used to seeing two handles, but they had multiplied into six, so he had to check each one. Still nothing. “Right. Right. So we’ll just have to go get help.”

“Good. I did mention the antibiotics, Kakashi. Kakashi? That’s – that’s not the hospital’s direction!”

oOoOoOo

Kakashi felt that he made rather good time to the Inuzuka compound, despite how Pakkun repeatedly tried to trip him. “You’re a ninken, not a sheep herder,” he told Pakkun at least twice, rather put out that Pakkun had nipped at his heels a few times. Also, it seemed kinda weird for there to be child-sized bloody prints in the snow. He strongly considered the possibility of hypothermia-induced hallucinations.

“If you didn’t keep falling asleep in the snow, I wouldn’t be biting you!”

“Mmm’not sleeping. Only resting my eyes. So much to look at – when did Mom get an extra latch for her gate?” Kakashi lunged himself upright. He narrowed his eye in concentration as his fingers fumbled disobediently. He didn’t know if it was because they shook so badly or because the latch was such a complicated thingamabob. Kakashi was saved from having to figure out the answer, however, when the gate was flung open from the other side. Hana stared up at him, her face nearly hidden in her jacket’s fur-lined collar. Kakashi smiled down at her. And swayed. “Oh, it’s my cute little sister-”

“ _What_ are you doing out here, _you floundering dolt_?”

“…not so cute,” Kakashi grumbled as Hana broke his fall and manhandled him into the Clan Head’s house. Pakkun followed after, his own expression nervous. “What’re you doing up past your bedtime?” Kakashi asked as he poked the top of Hana’s head. The kitchen’s back door was already open as she dragged him through, and she slammed it shut with a solid kick.

“I’m supposed to be feeding the puppies. You reek, Kakashi! I could smell you coming from blocks away without even trying to in this nasty wind!” Kakashi pouted as she dumped him in a kitchen chair. Three wide-awake puppies barked and nudged at his legs as their tails wagged furiously. His presence attracted the attention and energy from a few other puppies that had been ready to fall asleep. “Why didn’t you go to the hospital?”

“Because Pakkun said I needed antibiotics.”

Hana leveled her angry glare at Pakkun. Pakkun wilted. “The hospital is the other way, idiot.”

Pakkun whined and crouched down. “But I _told_ him that.” Two puppies eagerly pounced on him, because he was a small target to play with. Pakkun whined again, but had long ago resigned himself to being a chew toy for the Inuzuka ninken. He had recently put his paw down on being bait, however, considering the events of last year.

Hana was bustling around in the kitchen, gathering up cleaning and bandaging supplies when Kakashi finally acknowledged that he was having hallucinations, and such was most likely due to his infection-induced fever. It took him way too long to realize that the scrappy blond pup wearing too-large teddy bear pajamas with both feet bandaged wasn’t an actual ninken puppy. But there was no possible way that Inuzuka Tsume would allow the jinchuuriki to sit on her kitchen counter, much less be dressed in pajamas that Kiba had outgrown.

Or eat her cup ramen.

… make that _three_ cup ramen.

Seriously – four? Did the kid have an extra stomach stuffed somewhere in his pajama bottoms?

The jinchuuriki waved a package of unprepared cup ramen in the air. “More! I want more!”

“You’ve had enough before breakfast, Naruto.” Hana hauled him off the counter where he had been seated and set him firmly on the floor. He greedily hugged the cup ramen to his chest. “And if you don’t behave, I’ll give _you_ another round of antibiotics.”

The jinchuuriki’s face filled with horror and he retreated backwards with gingerly steps, one hand flying back to cover his bottom. “No!”

That didn’t bode well for his own self, Kakashi mused as he watched Hana put the bottle of penicillin and needles on the table in front of him. He hated needles. They were so small and poky, and he wasn’t convinced that they wouldn’t break off in his body and stay there. At least a kunai could be removed without the use of tweezers and a magnifying glass. “Wait… isn’t that the antibiotic that Mom uses on the dogs?”

“Yup.” Hana didn’t look from the notebook she was scribbling some numbers on. “Lessee, not accounting for the breed and age, I can do it by body mass, or the simple twenty milliliters per thirty kilograms formula rounded up to the next thirty. What’s your weight, Kakashi?”

Pakkun answered for him. “Fifty-nine kilos.”

Hana looked outraged. “Did you even eat anything when you were away? Mom is going to _kill_ you.” The jinchuuriki watched them both with wide blue eyes, one bony finger pressed against his lips. His body was tense and wary, as if he wanted to leave as much as he wanted to stay. Kakashi sniffed, and gagged at the stench of sickness that oozed from his side. Then he shut down his olfactory senses again. He could afford to be half-blind here – no other place would give him an alert to approaching danger as fast.

“Save yourself a needle then,” Kakashi declared gallantly.

The smile that crept across Hana’s face was decidedly evil. “No. I’m sure the loss of a needle will be worth it.” She whistled. “Kuromaru, make sure that Kakashi stays right where he’s at.” She went back to scribbling on her notepad.

Kuromaru growled the moment Kakashi stood. So Kakashi sat back down – his legs felt weak and rubbery beneath him, anyway, so it was just as well.

“Ah hah! Forty milliliters should keep you alive long enough for Mom to kill you.” Kakashi watched in trepidation as Hana extracted the penicillin from the bottle. “And then, after this, you’re going to eat something.” Needles used on ninken were significantly larger than needles used on humans. The awareness didn’t make him feel better.

“I’d like some cup ramen.”

“Kiss my ass, brother. Mom still has some leftover mush she prepared for Nagumi.”

Kakashi felt both of his eyes tear up. “You’re going to feed me the mush?” For some reason, that made his chest tickle with affection.

“Yup. Now stand and drop your pants.”

Did he think affection? Maybe he meant infection.

“ _Now_ , Kakashi. Or I’ll go get Mom to do it.” Kakashi sighed as he struggled to undo his belt. Hana waited an impatient twelve seconds before setting the needle down and moving in front of him. “Mom’s right. Men turn into gigantic puppies at the first sign of sickness.” She made short work of his belt. As she flung it off to the side, Kakashi saw the jinchuuriki flinch back violently, frail shoulders hunching as his eyes followed the belt. Hana stepped back, her hands on her hips. “All right, _now_ you can stand and drop your pants.”

“Do you even realize how many women in this village would love to be in your shoes right now?” Kakashi asked as he undid his fly.

“I’d probably feel a lot more impressed if I didn’t remember bathing with you. Besides, at least you don’t have to turn around and bend over, too.”

“You were _four_. I was _twelve._ I thought you’d drown if I left you alone at the onsen!”

“Are you stalling? I think he’s stalling, Kuromaru. Bite him for me, would you?” Kakashi stood immediately. His head swam and lights darted in his vision. He clutched at the table as the floor shifted beneath his feet. He barely felt Hana’s warm hand tug the waistband down just far enough to viciously jab the needle into his left buttock and inject the penicillin. She didn’t even bother slapping a band aid over the injection site before she yanked his trousers back up and over his hip. “You’re good. Sit back down.” Kakashi was glad to obey.

As Hana put away the veterinarian supplies, the jinchuuriki carefully approached Kakashi. Kakashi was too drained and too… well, he hated to admit it… _sick_ to react in any way except watch the brat. And he really needed to zip up his fly, eventually… His insides felt like they were on fire, but he shivered like he still stood outside in the cold.

The jinchuuriki gingerly patted Kakashi’s knee with the sympathetic look of someone who was intimately familiar with getting penicillin injected in his left buttock. Then the kid dropped the cup ramen into Kakashi’s lap.

It was pork-flavored.

“Gosh, you’re cute,” Kakashi said, sniffling.

The kid’s answering grin was so breathtakingly, heartbreakingly like Minato-sensei’s that Kakashi found it far too difficult to stop sniffling. Gosh, crybaby Obito’s eye was really watery this morning…

Hana absently handed the cup ramen back to the jinchuuriki. “Naruto, I need you to stand right here, and hold _this_ for me.” She handed a roll of gauze to the kid. His little chest puffed out like a genin proudly accepting his very first assignment. Hana made short work of Kakashi’s shirt with her scissors.

“Hey – I might’ve wanted to save that.”

“Why? The dogs would’ve just buried it in the first deep hole they could find, and they probably wouldn’t have hesitated even if you were still wearing it.” Hana yanked the material out of his barely-clotted wound. He hissed in pain. Her frown was spectacularly like Tsume’s as she studied the deep laceration that flayed open the right side of his ribcage. The edges were swollen and cherry-red, and the wound itself coated with a pungent, thick yellow slime. Blood also welled up, now that she had disturbed the scab. “Good grief, Kakashi! Was getting stabbed by the enemy not enough? Did you have to roll around in a pile of manure before coming home, too?”

“It was a metal-studded whip, actually,” Kakashi replied defensively. “And who knows where it was before me.” He decided it was best not to mention that exploding tags had been attached to the metal studs. Or that the enemy shinobi could also make poison drip off the end of the whip. Or that they had wrestling in a stagnant swamp, because the enemy had some weird bloodline limit where he exuded oil from his pores, making it insanely difficult to get a grip. It was the unsexiest mud wrestling that Kakashi had ever been apart of, and the sooner he could forget, the better. Hana could probably smell all of that just from the odors clinging to his clothes.

Kakashi gritted his teeth and whined as Hana liberally poured Tsume’s sake over the wound. “Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to my cute little sister to be so abused like this?” The blond kid patted Kakashi’s knee in sympathy again.

“Shut up. You embarrassed me in front of…” Hana’s voice trailed off as she blushed bright red. Kakashi was prevented from exploiting his sister’s crush when the kitchen door swung open. The blond kid ducked out of sight beneath the kitchen table as Tsume’s third foster son, Yakushi Kabuto, entered the kitchen. Kabuto removed his glasses as the warm air made them immediately fog. He blinked in surprise at Kakashi and Hana as six puppies surged forward to greet him with sloppy kisses.

“Oh, Kabuto-chan!” Kakashi raised a weak hand and waved. “You’ve come just in time to save me from our wicked little sister!” Kakashi dropped his hand when the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, followed Kabuto into the kitchen and gently closed the door behind.

Hana straightened immediately, her face filling with worry. “Hokage-sama! Good morning!”

Pakkun glanced between Kakashi and the Hokage and then retreated under the table. It suddenly occurred to Kakashi that one shouldn’t attempt standing in ceremony for the Hokage when one’s fly is still undone. Since the world swam too much for him to stand, sitting with his fly open was socially acceptable, right? Kakashi tried to be subtle as he pulled the sipper up.

The Hokage smiled gently at everyone – although the gentleness had a brittle edge when he turned the smile on to Kakashi. “Good morning, Hana-chan, Kakashi-san.” And then, stooping, he waved at the little figure beneath the kitchen table. “And you, too, Naruto-chan.” A bony little hand emerged from the shadows long enough to wave back. The puppies surged at the Hokage, just as slobbery with him as they had been for Kabuto. No one said anything as the Hokage removed his winter cloak, hung it in the coat closet, and seated himself in the chair that Hana offered.

“Ah. I see that your first aid is coming along very nicely,” he told Hana.

Hana beamed with an uncertain pride. “Thanks, Hokage-sama… am I late for the Academy? I thought I still had plenty of time!”

“Not at all, my dear, not at all. I just needed a word with your mother and figured if I saw her before my day started, I wouldn’t forget what I wanted to say. No, please, don’t get her up now for me. I’m perfectly willing to wait for her the entire day in this pleasantly warm kitchen, instead of my icy-cold office. You wouldn’t want _that_ for this poor old man, would you?”

The Hokage withdrew his pipe and tobacco from his robes. “Besides, my pen is probably frozen, so I wouldn’t be able to do any paperwork. I should just take the day off when I’m done here.” He turned cool eyes back to Kakashi, who was hoping that he looked pathetic enough in his sickness to be granted pitiful mercy from the Hokage. “Mmmm, yes. Fine work indeed for a wound that would otherwise require immediate attention from a skilled medic in the hospital.” He pointed with his pipe’s stem as Kabuto leaned forward and inspected Kakashi’s wound with a curious expression. “But you appear to have missed a spot _there_ with the sake. Now, this is what you’ll need to do next…”

 _The God of Shinobi is a merciless son-of-a-bitch,_ Kakashi thought vehemently.

Kabuto and Hana’s faces lit with an unholy glee at the Hokage’s instructions, and didn’t change as they scrubbed the wound clean (“ _Really, Kakashi, you should fuss less and be proud of your contribution to the education of our future med nin, especially when they not yet even out of the Academy!”),_ packed it with gauze that had been soaked in a mixture of diluted honey, and wrapped his torso so tightly that breathing was probably just an option. Then they sponge-bathed his face and limbs not-so-gently.

“I already gave him a shot of penicillin,” Hana was happy to report. She was also explicit in describing where it was administered as Kabuto ruthlessly divested Kakashi of his pants (ah man, he worked so hard to get them zippered up and buttoned, too) and then forced him into a nightshirt that Tsume had temporarily loaned Naruto before Hana switched Naruto into Kiba’s old pajamas. Kakashi wasn’t sure he approved of wearing Naruto and Tsume’s scents at the same time. It made him even more uncomfortable than being stripped nearly-naked in front of the Hokage.

By this time, all the puppies had settled back into sleepy piles around the Hokage and Kakashi’s feet, and Naruto was snoring away in the Hokage’s lap, the cup ramen still clutched in his hands. “Excellent job, children,” the Hokage said around his pipe as smoke trailed from it. “You two continue to have all the makings of fine, skilled med nin. Even my dear student, Tsunade-hime, would be proud of you. Now – after cleaning the wound and dressing it to prevent further contamination, what would be the next important task for our young guinea pig here?”

“Food?” Hana asked.

Kabuto shook his head. “Sleep.”

“Both are important, but Kakashi-san here can’t eat when he’s asleep. And since he’s halfway to that stage, it’s best to let his body rest and heal itself. In bed.”

Hana’s expression was evil again. “Mom said to put all the pups into her bed before I left for the Academy.”

The Hokage puffed for a moment, and then echoed, “ _All_ the puppies?”

“ _All_ the puppies.”

“I find it best for everyone’s health and wellbeing to go with the passing whims of Inuzuka Tsume.” The Hokage tapped his hand against Kuromaru’s head. With a cloud of chakra, Kuromaru was henged into a hairier version of Kakashi. “I’ll respect the adults’ privacy and stay here, so you’ll need to help Kakashi along,” he told Kuromaru. Then he helped fill Hana and Kabuto’s arms with eleven sleeping puppies and two snoring three year olds. Nagumi trailed after them. The Hokage reseated himself as Pakkun emerged from the shadows beneath the table.

“Right, so you’re going to unload everyone into Tsume-sama’s bed, knowing that _he’s_ here? I think I’ll take my chances with the wolves,” Pakkun muttered, and then retreated to the kennels with his tail tucked between his legs.

oOoOoOo

Kakashi thought that Kuromaru did a pretty good job walking upright – better than Kakashi was doing, at any rate. Stairs were really such a tricky, complicated thingamabob, like latches. Tsume’s eyes flickered open as Kuromaru shoved open the bedroom door. She yawned and pulled the blankets back, revealing a strangely familiar-looking robe she was half-wrapped in instead of the usual nightshirt that Kakashi now wore. Kuromaru wasn’t kind when he dropped Kakashi onto the mattress, especially after Kakashi tripped over the complicated pillows strewn everywhere on the floor. As soon as Kakashi bounced, the henge dispersed. “Did you skip the hospital again?” Tsume asked knowingly. Kuromaru nudged Kakashi’s limp arm onto the mattress. Kakashi carefully rolled over on his side to face Tsume.

“Ow.”

“You’d think after being patched up twice before by Hana and Kabuto that you’d’ve learned your lesson.” She kept the covers pulled back until Hana dropped Naruto in between Kakashi and Tsume. She stiffed slightly as the blond kid curled up in a ball and pressed icy-cold feet against her breast.

“Ugh.”

Tsume scooted back on the mattress away from the cold feet – and physical contact with the jinchuuriki, Kakashi suspected. She then carefully drew the covers forward and tucked them around Kakashi. Oh – she gave him the warm spot _and_ the pillow! What a wonderful, loving, sweet foster mother he had, and the greatest aunt in the whole world. Much nicer than those evil foster siblings spawned from the third circle of hell… A masculine voice grunted as Kabuto wordlessly shoved Kiba under the covers on the other side of Tsume. The puppies were gently piled on top of the blankets, and were soon joined by Kuromaru and Nagumi climbing onto the bed.

“You need a bigger bed,” the masculine voice muttered just as Tsume waved goodbye to the departing Hana and Kabuto. Neither of whom looked particularly surprised at Tsume’s nocturnal companion.

( _“So how was your sleepover last night with the Aburame, Kabuto?”_

_“It wasn’t a sleepover! Hisoka and I were studying together for midterms. I didn’t have to come back home to walk you to class, you know.”)_

_Gosh_ , Kakashi thought once he realized that the masculine voice meant that there had already been someone else warming Tsume’s bed – and not because Tsume had to have been cold at the moment. _This is terribly awkward._ Especially when the masculine voice revealed itself to be Shimura Danzo, who glared one-eyed at Kakashi from the other side of Tsume’s bare shoulder. Kakashi’s brain may have been half-melted from the fever, but he knew when an alpha male was reminding lesser mortals of their place on the food chain.

Danzo was at the absolute top. Kakashi ranked somewhere between a carrot and a head of lettuce.

Tsume crooned as she reached across Naruto and pressed Kakashi’s eye shut. Naruto, despite being asleep, somehow managed to take advantage of Tsume’s raised arm to snuggle closer to her with his cup ramen. “Sleep, my sweet. You’re safe here.”

Kakashi would’ve panicked if he didn’t feel like a raw piece of meat that had been fought over by a herd of bloodthirsty wolverines. And he was probably much safer if he was weaponless and knee-deep in the stagnant swamp that the oil-dripping, whip-wielding ninja had ambushed him two days earlier. He was in the _same bed_ as _Shimura Danzo_. (Oh no – was Danzo naked? Please don’t let him be naked. Kakashi was too young to be very quietly assassinated and have his body dumped somewhere that even Tsume wouldn’t be able to sniff out.) His voice sounded weak in his ears as he used the last of his energy to convince Danzo that he wanted no part in this. “I think this is supposed to be socially unacceptable.”

Tsume arched backwards against Danzo. “Bah. We’re social. One out of two isn’t bad.”

Kakashi had nothing to say to that; he immediately fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have always loved this chapter. The part where Naruto drops the cup ramen into Kakashi's lap always tugs my heart strings.


	3. Delta years - Chapter Three

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.  
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.  
For want of a horse the rider was lost.  
For want of a rider the message was lost.  
For want of a message the battle was lost.  
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.  
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

It is the little things that shape and define lives. The little things are often overlooked, in favor of the large things. Who notices the ant carrying a twig when they stand in the shadow of a gigantic tree? But for the want of a nail, the kingdom had been lost. But kingdoms are not always lost for want of a nail – sometimes, kingdoms are also saved for want of a nail.

Countless kingdoms have risen and fell on single little unknown events. In retrospect, singularly unrelated events suddenly look like a string of bizarre coincidences, all designed to manifest greatness – whether good or bad. For this particularly kingdom, this particular world, the string of bizarre coincidences were two bright souls that would be each other’s want of nails in many different occasions. In the occasions that they clashed – usually with a dark shadow that somehow managed to get between them – sparks flew.

Shimura Danzo would always assume it was the mark of a large thing that changed the course of his life and radically altered his philosophy and attitude – the blood of a willing twelve year old, coerced into something no twelve year old child should ever have to suffer, smearing his thighs and penis.

Inuzuka Tsume would really never give it any thought – she was who she was, and that was all she was ever going to be, because if she wasn’t who she was, then she had to be someone else, and then she’d be right back to being who she was. Everyone liked to think that Tsume was a simple woman and that her thoughts were linear. They weren’t. Her thoughts merely preferred the path of least resistance. She might have had the raw makings of a tactical genius…. But that was a lifetime ago, before Tsume exceeded her limits and was found in the Nara forest lying unconscious in a pool of her own blood.

Uchiha Madara… well, everyone agreed that he was crazy and a total ass, so no one cared about what may or may not have changed his path in life. (If anyone had asked, and he was being totally honest, he would have reluctantly admitted that the few morals he retained in the midst of the Curse of Darkness was left over from a time when Inuzuka Natsumi more-or-less herded him and Senju Hashirama and their men cross-country to rescue children who belonged to other clans. But that was over sixty years ago, and everyone assumed he was dead. He wasn’t. Well, at least not most of the time. He was just busy cooking up plots.)

For Tsume, her course in life changed when a string of events culminated into – and fell away from – a single question that Danzo posed to her when she was ten years old: “But your puppy, Kuromaru, is male – why did your clan claim him?”

oOoOoOo

Danzo tolerated the suffocating shared presence of a clingy three year old, two full-grown dogs, a robust woman, eleven puppies, a miniature demon vessel, and a gangly (comatose) teenager for better than an hour. Mostly because he was warm and comfortable, and his joints ached even more at the thought of heading out into the cold. He didn’t normally participate in the pleasures of bed this late in life, much less share it for a night with a single woman, so it was a bizarre novelty to suddenly be a part of a _zoo_.

It reminded him of his youth long past, when cold nights on the road meant having to share his blankets with Uchiha Kagami and Akamichi Torifu, and even Sarutobi Hiruzen and his team, after Senju Tobirama assumed responsibility and leadership for Danzo’s team. It also meant that Danzo usually lost the rock-paper-scissors on who was stuck bedding with the future Third Hokage. Hiruzen was the worst when it came to sharing because the man had the damn habit of hogging every single inch of the blanket, even if it wasn’t his own. Danzo always felt a twinge of remembered sympathy towards Biwako, who deserved to be enshrined alongside the sanctified memory of the Sage of Six Paths. Danzo couldn’t stand sharing his blanket with Hiruzen for two nights in a row, and didn’t understand how anyone could put up with it for thirty-two years without making quiet arrangements for an assassination.

Tsume didn’t hog the covers – she just naturally gravitated to warm bodies instead, until a person was left with just the smallest corner of the bed as they retreated from Tsume’s inevitable hostile mattress takeover.

Danzo’s body and mind were still sleepy, but not enough for him to drift back to sleep. He wondered, as little Kiba wiggled between him and Tsume with one plump thumb shoved into his mouth, how did it come to this? Kiba sighed until he finally managed to find a comfortable spot wedged beneath Danzo’s chin.

Well, he knew how it came to _that_. Sex made babies, and babies were born either vaginally or self-inflicted Cesarean. It’s not like Tsume self-fertilized like a flower. Although she _was_ prone to taking in abandoned and orphaned strays by her own accord, or the occasional offered (not-quite) sob story.

He felt in no way threatened by the people surrounding him or the thoughts buzzing in his brain, so he let them play out as his body and mind slowly awakened. He had slept hard for five hours (not long enough – never enough – bah, he’d sleep when he died), able to finally relax his guard enough to obtain badly-needed rest. There was something to be said about the relative safety of Konoha’s greatest tracker in the heart of her territory. And that the sex had removed some of the painful tension that kept his body on edge. Kakashi was also sleeping hard, although it looked more likely due to his own self-negligence than the environment. Danzo was going to have to place a standing order that a full squad of ANBU personally – and successfully – escort the brat to the hospital the next time he returned _this_ damaged from a mission.

He could easily imagine the exasperation on Sakumo’s face.

Danzo quietly sat upright. He carefully extracted Kiba’s tight-fisted grasp from his hair and bandages, and moved smoothly enough out of bed to avoid disturbing the puppies. Kiba predictably rolled over and pressed himself against his mother. Hmmm. Danzo’s chest was bare. Tsume was bundled in his robe and if he wasn’t mistaken, she had deliberately planted last night’s love bite right at the crook of his neck where the robe couldn’t cover.

 _Bitch_ , he thought affectionately. He retaliated by absconding with Tsume’s fluffy bathrobe. He wrapped himself in it before ducking into the bathroom for morning ablutions. As he carefully extracted himself from his pants (Tsume might enjoy ‘morning wood’, but it wasn’t the highlight of his day), he was unable to stop the old, deep-seated relief that his genitals weren’t smeared with blood (— _twelve years old **TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD**_ –). He frowned and dismissed such relief. He cleaned himself carefully before descending the stairs.

Two Uchiha – Fugaku and Yahiko – were impatiently seated at Tsume’s kitchen table. Tea sat ignored in front of them. Sarutobi Hiruzen tilted his head and smiled in greeting from where he also sat – no doubt the only reason why the police hadn’t already stormed the stairs. Fugaku’s expression remained hard as Yahiko’s face flushed red, but both seemed to sink a little in their seats.

Apparently, Danzo was more intimidating in Tsume’s fluffy pastel-pink bathrobe than his original wardrobe. He ignored them as he moved around her kitchen with a familiar ease. He found his preferred tea stuffed in a bear-shaped cookie jar, cream on the second shelf of the fridge, and homemade raisin muffins in a wax paper-lined tin. The raisin muffins looked a little misshapen, as if an eager three year old had helped in their creation.

“I’d offer you gentlemen some food,” Danzo said as he spread his findings before himself before taking a seat next to Hiruzen, “but I suspect you’ve already eaten.”

The police remained silent. Danzo supposed that, were their positions switched, he would have no social clue of how one was supposed to speak to a former captain of ANBU-cum-revered Council elder, and advisor to the Hokage, half-dressed in the kitchen of the kunoichi most notorious for her sexual exploits and recklessness that frequently left her teammates wondering if throwing themselves at the mercy of their enemies wasn’t a better deal. He bet he’d given the Uchiha an apoplectic fit if they’d seen who shared his bed with him no less than fifteen minutes ago, because Danzo had a well-earned reputation of being intolerant of puppies, toddlers, and all things cute and sweet.

“Did you stay warm?” Sarutobi Hiruzen asked with an amused gleam in his eye.

Danzo chose not to dignify that with a response. Instead, he said, “Tsume will kill you when she realizes you are smoking in her kitchen.” He made himself tea as Hiruzen shrugged languidly and took another deep draw off the pipe.

“Being Hokage allows one certain privileges.”

Danzo remained silent as he poured the cream into his cup, and then stirred a little tea into his cream. Tsume and her children preferred their tea to be strong enough to make hairs sprout off one’s chin; he preferred the richness of tea-flavored cream. It was one of the few pleasures of life he allowed himself. Sex with Inuzuka Tsume wasn’t so much a pleasure as it was a necessary means of survival against her libido, or to prevent another hare-brained scheme that could potentially insult two of the most powerful and important clans in Konoha yet _again_. “You’re correct,” he told Hiruzen. “She will most likely lecture you until your brain bleeds out of your ears.”

“Tsume doesn’t lecture well when it’s not her sex workshop – she had a dreadful habit of repeating herself. I think her children are half-behaved to avoid the lectures, rather than behaving out of fear or disapproval.”

“Hence the brain bleeding.” Danzo saluted the Uchiha with his teacup. “She isn’t the only one who delivers a poor lecture.”

Fugaku gritted his teeth. “Reading you your rights _would not_ be a lecture, poor or otherwise. As I’m sure you suspect, we _have_ obtained a warrant that allows us to search the premises, signed by the Head of Internal Affairs himself, although Kagami told us to be sensible, which is why we’re sitting here and not actively conducting a search. However, I have chosen not to request a warrant for your arrest for aiding and abetting a potential felon.”

Hiruzen spoke. “I would’ve vetoed the warrant, anyway. I feel, given the involvement of the jinchuuriki _and_ Inuzuka Tsume, we should approach this quietly, with an open mind, and ask more questions.”

“It is a felony for a shinobi clan to interact with the jinchuuriki before he enters the-”

Danzo waved Fugaku silent. “Yes, yes. Et cetera, et cetera. I could quote the law word for word; I don’t need you abbreviating it for me.”

Fugaku’s posture was brittle. “You are not above the law.”

Ah – so it was about _Danzo_ , with the jinchuuriki being a peripheral matter. Tsume was also a peripheral matter – most likely because she had such a long, personal history of antagonizing Uchiha Fugaku that he had resigned himself to a lifetime of such abuse. Fugaku would probably suspect that a polite and respectful Tsume was nothing more than a cleverly-disguised enemy.

Danzo would be able manipulate the situation more easily now that the jinchuuriki wasn’t at the heart of the matter, especially when Hiruzen watched and listened. “No, I’ve never felt such.” He also felt that Konoha came before the law – and before morals, ethics, individuals, emotions, obligations, and many other noble ideals of decent, honorable, _modern_ shinobi. Danzo’s very few scruples existed only because of an old memory of _(—twelve years old **TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD—** )_ bloody smears.

But the Uchiha were going to be very cautious of how they circled Danzo, like wolves lurking outside the parameter and sniffing for any possible weakness.

Danzo hid a grin – he had been working with the canine minds of Inuzuka even before Fugaku was born. He knew how to handle circling wolves. “Indeed,” he added casually, “none of us are above the law.”

“You said that no jinchuuriki was present on the compound, though we know otherwise. Inuzuka also claimed that no jinchuuriki was present. Both of you harbored the jinchuuriki, and interfered with the police investigation. This is a known felony.” Fugaku paused a long moment, looking very unsure of himself, and then added, “Given your… personal activities of last night, it’s _possible_ that one might reach a conclusion that someone of Inuzuka’s nature is in your personal favor.” His next words were so hurried that it was a wonder that his tongue didn’t trip. “But you are famous for not allowing personal regard of any sorts to influence your decisions and actions, Honorable Elder, which leads me to believe that the purpose of _your_ involvement with the jinchuuriki is beyond the scope of the felony. But without more information, I cannot close the investigation.”

Danzo didn’t think he’d ever been accused of nepotism before. Well, let it not be said that the Uchiha – especially their clan leader – lacked balls. Even if Tsume had notoriously ruptured one or two Uchiha testicles during her Academy days.

Hiruzen’s eyes flickered to Danzo as Danzo took a bite of the raisin muffin. Mmm. The raisins were nice and plump – just the way he liked them. “This matter seems quite serious, Danzo.”

Danzo hid his irritation well, although it took a supreme act of self-control not to roll his eyes. _Hypocrite._ Hiruzen was so easily swayed by his emotions, and when he found himself backed into a corner between doing what was right by the law and what was right by the individual, he expected Danzo to bail his scrawny pale ass out of the fire. It was a dynamic decades old in their relationship. “The Uchiha Police Force is an upstanding example and credit to the clan’s honorable code of conduct.”

Fugaku looked as though he had bit into a lemon. “Flattery _will_ be considered a form of bribery.”

“Even if it’s true? Ah, my apologies.” He focused his gaze on them. Yahiko squirmed uncomfortably; Fugaku was tense but still. “Forgive me, but I was under the assumption that the police force had indeed granted overt permission to Tsume to hold the jinchuuriki.” Danzo was pleased at the insulted horror that filled Fugaku’s face.

“Hmm. Well, that does change things.” Hiruzen sounded far too cheerful for such a discussion.

“Hokage-sama! It most certainly – we did no such thing!”

“Tsume explicitly told you that there were puppies in her kennels.”

“Puppies and old bitches. And then that naked whore played with herself in front of my men.” Fugaku’s cheeks turned red. He hastily bowed in apology to the Hokage. “Pardon my language; I mean no disrespect.”

“None taken,” Hiruzen replied, his face now filled with amusement. “I’m well-aware of Tsume’s provocative proclivities. But she said… puppies?”

Danzo looked at the table and tried to decide if he should ignore the crumbs. “She reported the same to me after the police departed. Only puppies here, she said.”

“Ah.” Hiruzen nodded his head. “Yes. I can see where one could easily believe that the police gave overt permission to carry on, that no crime was being committed.”

Yahiko looked from Danzo to Hiruzen. “But she said there were puppies!”

Hiruzen nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly, as if speaking to young children. “Puppies. Exactly.”

Danzo gave Yahiko a wry smile, just as Fugaku pinched the bridge of his nose. “The quality of the police investigations must be diminishing if you cannot realize that, in all your various interactions with the Inuzuka, they aren’t given to calling puppies _children_.”

Fugaku rubbed his forehead, as if he had a throbbing headache. “To be fair, it _was_ two in the morning, and it _was_ Tsume.” Then he frowned, as if replaying the entire string of events last night, accurate to the last detail because the Sharingan captures every detail, no matter how small. “Wait a minute…”

“She told you there were puppies on the premise. You let it slide. A simple woman like Inuzuka Tsume thinks only in linear fashion, so it’s easy to see how she would assume you merely granted validation.”

Sharingan eyes – no longer dark as they had been when he first entered – studied him. “Danzo-sama doesn’t think in linear fashions.”

No, he didn’t. The War Hawk thought like the Konoha spiral leaf – turning deeper and deeper towards the center just before the trap snapped shut. “I did say that she and I were going to discuss the law. I never specified _which_ law.” Fugaku didn’t even relax a fraction. “I think we _all_ need a review of this law.”

“And what law would that be?”

“The law and discussion thereof can wait until I’ve finished breakfast.”

The raisin muffin had been excellent, especially with his morning tea-cream, so Danzo decided to have a second one. Watching Fugaku squirm impatiently was also delicious, he thought. Hiruzen was content to smoke his pipe, although he got up once to add more wood to the fire in the living room. And since he raided Tsume’s raisin muffins, it hardly seemed fair to leave a mess of crumbs, so he made a point of wiping the kitchen table clean.

“Now,” Danzo began as he settled back in his chair. Daylight had brightened the kitchen up dramatically in the last few minutes. It seemed far too cheerful and homey to have the likes of the Uchiha sitting in doom and gloom. Or Danzo, come to think of it. Fugaku leaned forward, scarred forearms folded on the kitchen table, eyes narrowed like he suspected a trap. And so the spiral began… “Let us start with a simple observation – you tell it to be the truth, and so I shall accept it at face value. You _knew_ that the jinchuuriki was physically present in the Inuzuka kennels, at approximately two AM.”

“That is correct, Danzo-sama.”

“Which implies that you _knew_ the jinchuuriki’s prior location to the kennels.”

Fugaku was a little more hesitant with his answer. “We are aware of Point A, where the jinchuuriki had been previously, and Point B, his present location. The line between them is still under investigation.”

“Ah. So somewhere between the orphanage – I assume he was in the orphanage, yes? Good, at least we know your men aren’t _completely_ incompetent. So somewhere between the orphanage and the kennels, there is an unaccounted _three_ year old _child_ who somehow managed to elude your _adult_ police. I assume that he also managed to elude the ANBU, as someone like this should never have _left_ Point A.” Standards in ANBU had certainly fallen since Danzo’s forced retirement. Might be time for some surprise inspections and surprise trainings, especially since the aches and grumbles of his last surprise seem to had quieted down.

Danzo paused to sip his tea and risked a quick glance at Hiruzen. The Hokage’s eyes were hardened, like a pair of matching flints. _Watch, old man. See what your emotions and desire to put the individual above Konoha has wrought._ The spiral tightened _._ “This brings me to the question that Tsume brought to my attention while we were discussing the law. How does a _toddler_ wander through twenty centimeters of snow, _naked_ and _barefoot_ and _unsupervised,_ eight blocks in the dead of a winter night that is colder than anything Konoha has experienced in all of my lifetime?”

The silence was deadly, Hiruzen’s killing intent even more so.

“She tracked a pair of bloody foot prints into her kennels, and found him eating the dog food.” That made the killing intent flare up more. “Naturally, Tsume expressed concern for the child’s wellbeing and safety in light of this criminal negligence. The purpose of outlawing ninja clan interaction with the jinchuuriki was to minimize undue influences towards Konoha’s weapon, to prevent bias or manipulation of the jinchuuriki’s impressionable mind before it was mature enough for training. Interaction from the Uchiha Police Force was a necessary evil to enforce the law, but not one I feared, as you are a force bound by honor and duty.”

He had deliberately created the law as such so _all_ eyes could watch the one clan that _couldn’t_ avoid interaction with the jinchuuriki – not when they had been so questionably absent during the Kyuubi’s invasion three years prior. “However – and I admit this was an oversight on my part – there is nothing in the law that addresses what should be done if _civilians_ fail in their care towards the child.”

Fugaku’s Sharingan gaze swept between Danzo and the Hokage. “Inuzuka-san’s dogs eat better than most of my police force, and no doubt the orphanage itself.”

“True. And while I have limited experience with children, I understand that they habitually stuff all matter of things into their mouth not meant for human consumption. That is not the point, gentleman. The child cannot be sent back into an environment that may very well be the driving factor to the events of this morning. I therefore propose that the child’s care be turned over to the Inuzuka clan.”

Sharingan eyes began to spin - _it’s **possible** that one might reach a conclusion that someone of Inuzuka’s nature is in your personal favor. _

Hiruzen’s killing intent decreased, simmering slowly. “Why the Inuzuka clan?” Hiruzen’s eyes were as sharp as his question. His eyes were always sharp whenever _Danzo_ and _Tsume_ and _children_ came up in the same sentence. Probably because all five of Tsume’s children were, in some large manner, due to Danzo – particularly last year’s acquisition of Kabuto.

And the trap slammed shut as the spiral ended within itself. Danzo’s smile was tight. “Tsume has already fostered three orphans – we all know her weakness for them. And she found this orphan – naked as the day he was born – in a pile of her puppies, on a winter night that no mother would want her children wandering. No doubt he wore their stench well, marking him as one of _them_. I, for one, am not reckless or suicidal enough to pry this newly-discovered pup from Inuzuka Tsume’s possessive claws.” He shrugged. “You’re welcome to try,” he told Fugaku, knowing full well that Fugaku didn’t _dare_. “But warn me before you do – I’d like to sell spectator tickets first.” His smile was unchanged as Tsume interrupted their conversation by stalking into the kitchen with Naruto balanced on her hip.

oOoOoOo

Tsume’s nose, memories, and heart were at war as she lay unmoving in bed after the departure of Kabuto and Hana, and she rather resented such – it was complicated, and she didn’t like complications.

Her nose told her this was the Kyuubi.

Her memories reminded her of the stark, near-total destruction of her Pack, how there were so many bloody and burnt partial corpses of clan women and their ninken… The Hokage had personally assured her that the seal was strong, but he couldn’t explain why the stench of fox was so overwhelming if it was supposedly sealed completely within the newborn babe.

He never did say who the babe’s parents were.

Her heart, long marked by the likes of Kakashi sleeping the sleep of the ill beside her, told her that no pup should ever feel the pain of being unwanted and abandoned, especially no pup of Uzumaki Kushina. (As far as Tsume was concerned, only Kushina-chan would have the audacity to name her offspring after a _ramen topping_. Tsume liked ramen as much as the next gal, but Kushina had made a small religion out of her love for the national Uzu dish.)

And even if this wasn’t _Kushina’s_ child, Kushina-chan never would’ve wanted any child – even a host to the nine-tailed demon fox – to ever be forced to seek warm refuge in a pile of puppies and food from a dog dish.

But for the tears he cried last night, there wasn’t anything human in Naruto’s scent. The stench of the Kyuubi was overwhelming – even enough to almost drown out the Hokage’s foul tobacco smoke. But, she considered, if the thirteen dogs keeping them warm in bed weren’t bothered by it, then there had to be something else going on. Was she just smelling the Kyuubi more keenly because of the flashbacks? Scent was the most primal of all human senses, and the one most closely linked to memories. Perhaps, if she could catch that human scent once more, then she wouldn’t feel so brittle and torn. 

Mentally, emotionally, and physically bracing herself, Tsume channeled more chakra at her nose. The sense of smell that was normally a hundred times greater than a ninken’s became two hundred times greater than a ninken’s. Scent was nothing more than the detection of molecules in the air, and if it existed, it had a molecule. It helped that the Inuzuka, like so many other clans, had a genetic mutation that their clan techniques and secrets were built around, but it didn’t technically qualify as a Bloodline Limit – everyone had a sense of smell, no matter how poor or how great it seemed. The Inuzuka had a much larger cluster of sensory cells in the nose and tongue, thus allowing for greater detection of molecules even without increasing chakra to enhance sensitivity, as well as increased brain matter dedicated to interpreting the odors.

 _Five hundred times that of a ninken._ The limits of her olfaction were truly unknown – the first time she had pushed beyond the limit, it took years to partially recover from the brain damage, and that was even after Tsunade had done her best to heal what she could, and Yamanaka Yuu had shifted neurotransmitters around to stimulate Tsume’s short-term memory processes. It wasn’t that increased chakra at the nose was a particularly hard talent to master, but that few had the mental capacity to deal with being bombarded every second with thousands of different scents and messages. And the stronger the sense of smell, the more messages pounded at brain cells.

_One thousand times that of a ninken._

_Two thousand…_

_Three thousand…_

Fire burned behind her eyes and scorched her lungs. It felt like the top of her head had been shattered with a well-placed explosion tag. Trillions of scents – too many to identify – overwhelmed her. She could detect molecules from a passage of a monarch butterfly three months previously in a field of dandelions that lay a hundred kilometers north of Fire’s borders. She could trace every single step and encounter second by second that Kakashi and Naruto experienced in the last two weeks –months, even. _Years._ And every single step and encounter of the people that Kakashi and Naruto had crossed second by second. And the people _they_ had crossed. On and on, until it seemed like she could track the entire world, for the last hundred years.

Far beneath it all, she found a faint scent that triggered a memory – of more burning and bleeding and raw hope.

_(“Promise me, Hokage-sama… if I die, you’ll take care of my children, yes? My puppies. I don’t… **He** doesn’t understand puppies.”_

_“Ah, Tsume-chan. You’re far too stubborn to die, but very well. I promise that I will look after your children should anything happen to you – but only if you return the promise. That you will look after my own children should something happen to me.”_

_“Yeah, that’s fair. But… you don’t have children, Mooncalf. Do you? When did this happen? Wait, you lucky dog – you finally did the deed with Kushina, and I didn’t even notice!”)_

A defining moment – a major event in her life just occurred. And it had the same result as the want of a nail – a kingdom _would_ rise and fall.

She used the corner of Danzo’s sleeve to dab away the blood from her eyes and ears. And then there was no hesitation or fear as she drew Naruto close to her chest – only tenderness. _I’m so sorry I broke my promise, Minato. But now I’ll never let your son go – I swear this to your spirit with all that I hold dear._


	4. Alpha years - Chapter One

The Inuzuka clan wasn’t considered one of Konoha’s “noble clans”, although they could claim many different ties to the actual noble clans if they wanted to, given how the Inuzuka women often went looking for suitable sires. It wasn’t the smallest, the richest, the loudest, or had the lousiest survival rate of all clans (although _that_ one might be contestable), but it was the only matriarchal clan that was also strictly female.

Because the Inuzuka clan techniques and secrets relied heavily upon their sense of smell and aggression, it was decided many generations ago, before the founding of Konoha, that the men were too dangerous. To be fair to the clan alphas and elders who made this decision many generations ago, the men _were_ notoriously aggressive with their fighting and raping, and had posed a great danger to the very Pack they were supposed to protect. Since then, Inuzuka women notoriously kept their daughters, and then foisted their male offspring off onto the fathers. If there had been no fathers, especially in the time before Konoha’s founding… well, the woods were usually empty, dangerous places that took care of unwanted sons. In this day and age, at least there was an orphanage that knew well enough not to ask questions, if the sires refused to claim the male offspring.

It was impossible to tell which came first – the doglike qualities of the Inuzuka, or the humanlike qualities of their ninken. It was known that they had the noses like a dog and matching ninken personality traits. It has been said that the Inuzuka barely qualified as housebroken, although they were very likely to break a house.

They weren’t a secretive clan, lurking in shadows and _very obviously_ covering up secrets - not like the Uchiha and the Hyuuga clans, who hadn’t quite seemed to figure out the more you pretended that nothing was there and that even if there was it was none of your business, the more apparent that there was something going on. What was known about the clan was known by all – but the Inuzuka clan kept their secrets (and the secrets of everyone else, such as who slept with who, who went where at what times, and all those other nitty-gritty details of shame that people didn’t like advertised) carefully shrouded behind a façade that was loud, brash, and distracting.

oOoOoOo

Tsume was ten years old when the heavy diaper bag was slung from her neck like a noose and the baby was dropped naked into her arms, still covered with patches of white fuzz and sticky mucous, and stinking of birthing fluids. “It’s a _male_ ,” her great-grandmother said with a sneer. “Take it to its sire.” Tsume saw the stricken look on her older sister’s face, reddened and sweaty from the six hour delivery, before Grandmother Shinzou slammed the door shut with more force than was warranted.

The sound of the slamming door made the baby’s arms and legs snap outward like a scarecrow dancing in the wind, and then he cried. Tsume expected his cry to be robust and loud. It was actually kind of weak and pathetic, she thought, like a newborn puppy.

Assuming that sire meant father… “Who’s his dad?” she yelled over the crying.

No answer was forthcoming. She pressed her ear against the door, and heard Hidarime-chan weeping and Grandmother’s slightly-insincere platitude of, “Don’t worry, my dear, there will be other chances for a girl in the future.”

Well, there was more than one way to find the father. Tsume sniffed, and then made a face. “Good grief, you stink. I’m not carting your smelly little butt all over Konoha like this. Come on, Kuromaru.”

The baby’s cries, Tsume was pleased to note, sounded much stronger after she had scrubbed him down thoroughly (she hadn’t initially realized that cold water would do that, before thinking that maybe babies weren’t supposed to look so blue), and then wrapped him up in one of the blankets she scrounged up from the kennels. Now he sorta smelled like one of Inuzuka ninken, and that was _far_ more favorable to her nose.

Except the baby kept crying.

“Do you think this means he’s hungry?” she asked Kuromaru. He agreed that yes, it was most likely that the boy was hungry. She remembered when Kuromaru and his littermates had been born, and how all the puppies had cried and cried until they found their mother’s teats.

She searched the diaper bag and found formula. And diapers. Diapers would be good. And she really thought the baby onesie with smiling yellow ducks was adorable. So she stuck a diaper and the yellow ducky onesie on the baby after observing that male genitals looked funny (like a sock, she thought, or maybe a turtle, because she had never seen a non-canine penis before), and then she added a rather dashing bright yellow cap to keep his head warm. He only had a tuft of silver hair there, anyway.

Tsume carefully followed the directions printed on the back of the formula container to prepare a bottle. She had to ask Aunt Natsumi what the more complicated kanji meant, but Aunt Natsumi was used to Tsume’s reading difficulties, and was still patient and kind even though she was in a hurry to leave Konoha to obtain another summon she had managed to procure, following of a nervous-smelling jounin and his genin team who obviously hadn’t been expecting an elderly companion.

Trying to get the baby to successfully suckle was a frustrating exercise in futility. Tsume took baby and bottle back to the birthing room.

“You’re still here?” Grandmother Shinzou loomed angrily over Tsume as she exited the room. Grandmother was covered with blood and birthing fluids, and stunk worse than what the baby had. Apparently having babies was a messy business. “You don’t need me to repeat myself multiple times again. I told you to get that the damn runt off the Inuzuka compound – _take care of it._ We do not claim males!”

“But-”

“Are you deaf as well as stupid, girl? Go!”

Tsume and Kuromaru both ran in the direction that Grandmother Shinzou pointed, before Grandmother could follow through with a slap. Tsume was as alpha as her great-grandmother and older sister, but she wasn’t being groomed for leadership (“ _Why do you bother asking? You don’t have the brains for it.”)_ and therefore had no place to argue _._ “Sheesh,” Tsume muttered as she exited the compound, resentfully kicking at a clump of dirt. “Just ‘cause she didn’t get the precious girl that precious Hidarime-chan was supposed to have doesn’t mean she can take it out on me.”

 _That’s right!_ Kuromaru declared in loyal agreement. Tsume was as aggressive as her older sister was subtle, and only stored pertinent information in her brain, which wasn’t exactly her fault since her brain didn’t like to remember things. Boring things like lovers and pregnancy and sex went in one ear and out the other with the least amount of effort, because it never occurred to her that it was pertinent to know the father of Hidarime-chan’s baby.

After all, if it was a girl, the clan would keep it, and if it was a boy – well, she was now a participant to _that_ development. And she had known it was going to be a boy – she would’ve said she could smell that the baby was male, but no one asked her.

No one ever asked Tsume, not since she was six years old.

And now she had to go looking for the sire. Tsume decided that she was going to do a better job at remembering stray comments that people made, ‘cause apparently you never know when you’re going to have to deliver a man’s baby to him, and Ninja Must Always Be Prepared.

By now, the baby had fallen asleep. She hoped that meant he wasn’t going to starve to death. She really hated the idea of having to explain to the baby’s father that she had killed his son. Tsume resentfully suspected that some of the leadership grooming that she wasn’t allowed to receive involved the Proper Care and Feeding of Babies. She sometimes felt really lucky that the clan taught her so much about the puppies – but they kinda had to do that anyway, since she was an Inuzuka. Or at least that’s what Aunt Natsumi always said.

Times like this had long convinced Tsume that she wasn’t exactly the clan favorite, like Hidarime-chan, or the clan sweetheart, like cousin Shinchuu. But at least she wasn’t the clan pariah, with that particular distinction belonging to whacky Aunt Natsumi.

So, armed only with the knowledge that Tsume’s older sister’s lover was affectionately known to her as “Fang-chan” and the scent of the baby that coincided with the scent that often clung to her sister, Tsume upped the chakra in her nose and raised it in the air. The world of Konoha was such a big, beautiful place with all kinds of little stories you could lose yourself in – she dreamt of one day leaving the great wooden walls and venturing forth to see what other stories the world beyond could tell, especially when their scents hinted at the tip of her mind and imagination when the wind blew just right.

When a fifteen-year-old Hidarime taught a six-year-old Tsume how to channel chakra to better sniff out her surroundings, Tsume had kept pushing and pushing the limits to know more and more. Grandmother never forgave her for that… and Tsume never tried pushing the limits again, not when it took her so long to relearn numbers and the names of everyone around her, and how she wasn’t allowed to enter the Academy until she was at least eight years old because she couldn’t remember _anything_ , even after being told again and again and again.

She followed the scent – disturbingly old, by at least a week, and not very well, because she still hadn’t figured out the mechanics of which part of an old scent was newer than the rest of the old scent – around the compound, in and out of the market, through some of the training fields, the Hokage’s tower, and two restaurants (Tsume swiped a complimentary bun off an empty table because all this searching made her and Kuromaru hungry).

Tsume finally arriving at what was apparently one of the top secret internal offices of ANBU. Everyone else had been friendly when she stopped and talked with them. ANBU weren’t really friendly, and they were downright hostile when you entered their place unannounced. She refrained from naming them just to make sure they recognized her, because ANBU were also never happy when you revealed their Super-Secret Ninja Identity. (Really, she only did that _twice_ anyway. Er, that she could remember…)

“Gosh,” she said to the multiple weapons pointing at her and the many painted masks surrounding her, “this is _really_ awkward.” Kuromaru hunkered down between her ankles and growled as ferociously as a sixteen-week old puppy could.

“Really?” a dry voice asked. Weapons dropped and the people parted to reveal a man who had to be at least as old as dirt, but still younger than her great-grandmother. His was the only bare face in the entire room, though it was lined with a few deep wrinkles and his chin was scarred like an X. He waved the ANBU further back with a languid flourish of his arms. “Stand down, men. I’m sure our enemies haven’t yet reached the point where they’ve successfully managed to invade our headquarters with a prepubescent decoy armed with a newborn.”

“Hi,” Tsume said. “Do you know where I can find Fang-chan?” And then, because it really was a pressing issue, she added, “And does anyone know how to bottle feed babies? This kid’s _really_ incompetent.” Tsume was secretly glad that there was someone else out there who didn’t get things right the first time – or the third, or even the seventh, as the case with her may be sometimes – even if that someone else was less than a day old.

The man’s expression was carefully blank. “As young as he looks, I imagine it’s not something he’s had a lot of practice with.”

“My puppies managed it no problem, within minutes of being born, and with their eyes closed, too! _He’s_ at least an hour old.”

 _We’re smarter than humans_ , Kuromaru added snidely.

At that moment, the baby began fussing again. Tsume supposed that was a good sign and meant she hadn’t damaged him yet. She pulled the bottle out of her pocket and waved it. “I’m serious. I don’t know how to feed the baby.” No one moved or responded. She pulled a face at them. “You all suck, you know that? You can all kill a grown man at least seven ways to Sunday, but now you’re all scared about feeding a baby?”

“Scared?” The unmasked man was looking down at her with surprise.

“Hell yeah. I’m an Inuzuka and I can smell their fear! Except yours. Your scent is actually really dark, but it’s not like fear.”

The man’s slow-forming smile was dangerous and feral. He crouched down so he could look her in the eye. “Are you sure it’s the _baby_ they fear?”

It couldn’t be _her_ – she wasn’t due to graduate from the Academy for another seven months… Oh. Their fear had spiked the moment _he_ smiled at her. Which probably meant that he was, like, the boss-man. And bosses were supposed to _know_ things. “Do you know how to feed the baby?” Tsume offered him the bottle and gave him a smile of her own. His smile fell away – his eyes reminded her of a lizard, all flat and reflective. He straightened upward from his crouch and loomed like a deadly thunderhead. “Look – if the baby dies ‘cause he didn’t get fed, I’m telling Fang-chan that it was your fault.”

“Who’s Fang-chan?”

“Baby’s sire, I guess. I dunno. Grandmother just handed me the baby and told me to take it to its sire. I’m still sniffing around.”

Kuromaru eagerly wagged his tail. _And I’m helping, too!_

The man’s eyes were still flat, and his face could’ve been carved from stone. He turned his head slightly. “What are you all staring at – work doesn’t cease for foolishness. Rabbit-kun, you have children – figure it out.”

One figure managed to blurt out “Y-yes, Danzo-sama!” before the man left for the upstairs of the building.

Rabbit-kun was really actually Hyuuga Masaru, who had three young children with seals on their foreheads, and the only reason Tsume knew him was because his oldest daughter was one of her classmates. But she was careful not to say his name – he was easily embarrassed.

Tsume spent the next hour, watching and listening intently as Rabbit-kun instructed her on childcare. It was more than she felt necessary, since she really only wanted to know how to feed the baby, but it turned out that said baby had a high palate that made suckling rather difficult. This required some creative finger poking and bracing and lots and lots of practice to help maintain suction, and it was a very time-consuming process. Tsume was also bored, and Rabbit-kun liked talking, so she practiced her remembering skills even though it gave her a headache.

That creepy old man Danzo was back just as Tsume was practicing the not-so-fine art of baby burping. “Almost done here,” she told Danzo, who smelled of impatience and anger. And then she made a face at the mess the baby made all over her shoulder. “Ew.” She pulled the baby back and glared at him. The baby looked remarkably smug.

“You should’ve left long ago – this is not the place for little girls.”

Tsume puffed her chest out as Kuromaru barked. “I’m an Inuzuka – and I’m going to be a genin when I turn eleven!” It wasn’t as impressive a record as some she knew – especially when her sister had graduated when she was nine, but Tsume was trying really hard to beat the four years that Hidarime had been in the Academy, even if it was only by a few short weeks. “So I’m not a little girl.”

Rabbit-kun made a display of standing, waving his hand somewhere near his waist, and then comparing it to the top of Tsume’s wild hair.

“Be that as it may,” Danzo’s voice was as cold as his expression, belying the heat of his hidden emotions, “you have no place here. You’ve learned what you needed, and now it’s time to leave.”

“You’re a butthead,” Tsume grumbled as she gathered up the scattered supplies from the diaper bag.

There was a wave of something cold. Oddly enough, it smelled even hotter than his impatient anger. “ _Excuse me.”_

His scent wasn’t nearly as ugly as her great-grandmother’s, especially when he lacked Grandmother’s gut-wrenching malice. Tsume struggled a moment not to say another word _(“Your mouth is too big for your own good, child!”)_ and then said, “ _You_ don’t scare me.”

He loomed over her as his voice whispered like a distant thunderstorm. “Don’t I?”

And then her cousin Oyubi was there in a flutter, face hidden behind a porcelain mask painted like a fox’s, whispering rapidly, “Please, Danzo-sama, she’s not _normal_. I beg forgiveness for this _simpleton’s_ ignorant slights – Tsunade-hime said she couldn’t heal everything… ” Oyubi was one of the few clanswomen who was genuinely fond of Tsume and even occasionally protective, so Tsume knew she didn’t _really_ mean to say that Tsume was a simpleton. Maybe. Oyubi always took offense when people – especially outsiders – called her mother, Shinchuu, a simpleton, so it seemed strange that she would call Tsume the same.

Tsume shouldered the diaper bag and slipped away with dear Kuromaru at heel, not wanting to stay and watch the results of poor Oyubi crossing that cold man’s path. She sensed it would be even worse than when Hidarime-chan crossed paths with Grandmother by getting pregnant by a man that Grandmother had wanted no part of.

(What was _normal_ , anyway?)

Once outside of the ANBU building, even though she could still smell the rising anger, fear, and panic, Tsume resumed her hunting. The baby was quietly asleep in her arms again, but his novelty was wearing off and she was getting bored. So while she continued to track Fang-chan’s scent all over Konoha, she pretended that she was also a great and mighty ninja, like Tsunade-hime, creeping quietly through enemy territory. In her mind, the baby had become a precious scroll that she had to protect at all costs. She ducked and weaved through passersby and crowds, hid beneath the gutters, and ran along the rooftops.

The illusion was shattered a few times when the precious scroll required feeding and changing of icky diapers. The fun resumed when Tsume realized that she could wage biological warfare against her Uchiha enemies with said icky diapers, and she even managed to dodge the ones trying to stick her with tickets on littering and being a general public nuisance. Success!

Tsume finally managed to find herself at a small house with a very overgrown yard where Fang-chan’s scent marked it as his den. “Hi,” she said in greeting to the dark figure that was lurking on the roof, out of the line of her vision, but not her olfaction.

“I was wondering if you’d actually make it here.” Danzo dropped down to the front steps beside her.

“Are you stalking me, Shinobi-san? That’s super creepy.” Something flashed momentarily across his face, as if she had poked him with a big stick and he didn’t know if he should take it away from her or not. It was kinda fun, actually, metaphorically poking him with a big stick. “Grandmother told me to watch out for pervy old farts like you-” She squeaked and clutched at the baby as the wave of killing intent, dark and menacing – _blood kill die you stupid bitch_ – washed over her. She tried to breathe despite the smothering intensity and its stench, not knowing why her body wouldn’t move. Kuromaru’s tail tucked between his legs as he wet himself out of fear. The baby flailed his arms and legs like a scarecrow again, and wailed louder than he normally did. The startled cry shook her out of her frozen state. “Look at what you did!” she cried, shaking her finger at him. “I just had him sleeping!”

Danzo pulled back most of the killing intent until she could smell just a hint of it simmering beneath his own unique, dark scent. (His dark scent smelled, she thought, like old exploding tags and rusting kunai that had accidentally been left out in the rain.) Then he reached out and touched her carotid artery – her pulse wasn’t pounding. His hand was also large enough to completely wrap around her throat. “Fox-san reported accurately when she said you couldn’t experience fear.”

Tsume bobbed the baby up and down in her arms and swayed and cooed, like she had seen one of her aunts do when cousin Yami-chan was just born. She was glad to see that the baby was swift in quieting. She sat down on the steps and rested him on her knees, after first covering Kuromaru’s puddle with the welcome mat. Kuromaru whimpered and hid behind her.

“So… this where the father lives?” Danzo asked. His voice was back to being blank. He sat down beside her, and blocked the sun.

 _Butthead,_ she thought resentfully from his dark shadow. “It’s Fang-chan’s den.”

“Are you sure?”

She glared at him. Even despite a brain full of mush, her clan never questioned what she reported with her sense of smell. Tsume faithfully obeyed their orders that she never push the limits again, staying well within the normal confines of what never caused the world to tilt on its axis or funny lights to dance in her sight or blood to dribble out of her ears, but she got the feeling that what she could do was still more than what others did. Nagumi told her that, and Nagumi would know. Ninken were less inclined to lie, not like humans who lied all the time to her. “Absolutely.” Danzo had been waiting for her for some time, so he had to know something. Stupid adults and their stupid secret-keeping – why did they always think they could fool her nose?

“And you know this man to be the baby’s father because…?”

Tsume shrugged. “They’ve got the same smell.” It was the same sort of smell that all the Uchiha-born had, or all the Hyuuga-born. Every family had a unique sense of smell – every species of plants and animals, too – and then every individual had their own unique smell within the family smell. The same sort of smell everyone in the village shared. She always knew when someone was an outsider, because they just didn’t smell like Konoha or the Fire Country, and had done her best to study certain outsiders and returning shinobi to figure out which countries went with what scent.

“Have you ever met him?”

“Nope. But my sister would smell like that, after she came back from having sex.”

Danzo was silent, studying Tsume like he wasn’t sure what to do with her. Was she being too blunt? She vaguely recalled Aunt Natsumi telling her that adults didn’t like to hear children discussing sex. “Aren’t you going to knock?”

“Nope. He’s not home.” She tapped her nose. “The nose knows these things, see.” She also knew he hadn’t been there for a while, but she couldn’t really distinguish between one week and one month. Something to do with how stronger senses magnified things, but that just made her think of math, and Tsume didn’t like math. Stupid little numbers, always scrolling around and not coming out as the right answer, no matter how many times you added or subtracted them the same way.

“So you’re going to sit out here and wait until he comes back.”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the sire.”

“ _He_ is Hatake Sakumo, the White Fang of Konoha.”

The name sounded familiar – it did seem right to think of this Hatake person as a great shinobi. And something about lightning? She wondered if it was one of those names she had such difficulty remembering, or that she just didn’t know much in general. But Danzo was clearly expecting her to respond to this revelation. She looked down at the baby. “So?” she asked finally.

Danzo’s eyes picked her apart, like she was a complicated little bug. “The Inuzuka clan manages to breed successfully with the White Fang of Konoha, the last of the Hatake clan, and you’re _throwing_ the child _away_?”

It was what it was. “That’s right. We don’t keep males.”

“Hmmm. That’s odd.”

Well, not really. She knew this wasn’t the first boy her clan had dismissed in the last year. There were even a couple of unclaimed male cousins attending the Academy right now, and her first two years in the Academy had overlapped with her older brother’s last two years. “What’s odd?” she asked, just to keep the conversation going. When Danzo didn’t answer, she attempted to poke him in the side to make sure she wasn’t forgotten. He immediately dislocated her finger.

“Gah!” Kuromaru was swiftly between her and Danzo, growling ferociously as he clamped his teeth around Danzo’s arm and shook. Danzo easily pried him free by the scruff of his neck – “Wait – don’t hurt Kuromaru! Give him back now!” – and inspected Kuromaru’s underside.

“Odder and odder,” Danzo said disdainfully before he stood. He dropped Kuromaru on top of Tsume’s head as she lunged for him. Puppy, girl, baby, and diaper bag tumbled into one gigantic heap. The baby started crying again, and Tsume wanted to do to the same, because she had jarred her poor finger while protecting puppy and baby from harm. Danzo loomed over her again. “You are a reckless, overemotional girl. You have no fear, no self-preservation, no sense of personal boundaries or respect, no subtly worthy of speaking, no forethought, and you hope one day of becoming a kunoichi?”

She glared up at him resentfully. She didn’t like the way his scent had shifted – and didn’t understand the emotions she could smell. At least he hadn’t tried the killing intent again. “Sure. Why not?”

Danzo sneered down at her. “The Hokage calls the children the hope of the future, and then turns you all soft through his Academy in this time of war. I only see the doom of Konoha when I look at you. Your clan puts its ridiculous traditions above the needs of the village, carelessly making enemies of one of our strongest shinobi by abandoning his son to the whims of an ignorant ten year brat and her puppy. A son who has the potential to be greater than _all_ of your clan _combined_.”

That… that was way too many words for Tsume to absorb all at once, even if she knew that her clan was getting insulted. Besides, she didn’t have to discuss clan matters and tradition with an outsider – especially when the outsider was a male butthead. (She sometimes quietly stalked the man she knew to be her sire – their scent was too similar for it to be anything but – from a safe distance, and wondered if he would ever call her a simpleton or stupid or worthless, like Grandmother did all the time. Her sire seemed nice enough, especially when she sort of-maybe-kinda-accidentally dragged his son into trouble those first two years in the Academy.) “The Inuzuka clan doesn’t keep males.”

“But your puppy, Kuromaru, is male – why did your clan claim him?”

Something clicked inside of Tsume’s mind. Her thoughts took the path of least resistance, and the answer was so simple that she suddenly wondered why no one had thought of this before. “That’s right – this is a _puppy_!” Danzo looked startled at her outburst. “Puppies are babies, which makes this baby a puppy, and my puppy is male – _this is a puppy!_ ” She scrambled away from Danzo, intent on getting back to her clan with her newly-discovered revelation.

oOoOoOo

Tsume sulked as she hid in the kennels that night, carefully nursing both her sore cheek and the baby as she pressed against Nagumi for warmth. Nagumi was Kuromaru’s mother, so she was amiable towards the unexpected visitors, even if the human wasn’t on the Queen Alpha Bitch’s current list of 10 Most Liked Family Members. “She didn’t have to hit me,” she grumbled. “I could hear Grandmother the first time.” Grandmother hadn’t been pleased with Tsume’s revelation, and had made it quite clear when she struck Tsume across the face.

_(“Men are brutal and selfish monsters that rape anything with a hole!”)_

Kuromaru just whined with sympathy before he left for his dinner of kibble. Tsume’s resentful sulk was interrupted, first by Shinchuu, and then by Hidarime-chan. Shinchuu had brought Tsume a dozen freshly-baked butterscotch cookies – Tsume’s favorites. Oyubi’s mother always made sure that Tsume never lacked cookies, ever since the whole near death in the Nara Forest experience. It was also the only thing she was going to get for dinner, so Tsume immediately ate eight cookies, smug about not having to share them with the baby.

Hidarime-chan looked younger than her nineteen years of age, stricken and vulnerable in her simple white yukata, and she hovered at the entrance of the large room, unwilling to come forward. She smelled of pain and loss and afterbirth. They were sisters, borne of the same mother, but had different fathers. Their shared physical appearances consisted of the same dark hair, olive-toned skin, and sharpened teeth and fingernails. Where Hidarime was tall and slim, Tsume was short and solid (if slightly bony, given her age); Hidarime’s hair was smooth, and her eyes large and blue. Tsume had wild spiky hair and small, beady dark eyes.

“Do you want to hold him?” Tsume asked after a moment of staring. Hidarime-chan stepped forward gingerly, and knelt down. Her reach stopped just before she could touch the baby, and her hands trembled from exhaustion and reluctance. Tsume attempted to shove the baby into Hidarime-chan’s arms, but Hidarime-chan flinched back, and then retreated like a wounded, wild animal. “What’s wrong with everyone?” Tsume demanded hotly. “He’s… he’s just a puppy!”

“He’s male,” Hidarime-chan muttered, face filled with shame as she stilled near the entrance. Her face was turned away from Tsume and her shoulders were stooped as despair and pain colored her scent.

“Yeah, but so’s Kuromaru.”

“You wouldn’t understand. You’re too simple.” Tsume flinched, though not as severely as Hidarime-chan did. That’s what Grandmother had also said after she struck Tsume. (“ _I drown simple puppies like you, because they’re too stupid to breed and aren’t even useful mea tshields.”)_ Hidarime-chan sighed. “Being simple isn’t such a bad thing, Tsume-chan. Simple is more peaceful, like Shunchuu, and I hope you never lose that.”

Tsume just wished that Hidarime-chan would convince Grandmother of that. Not that Grandmother liked Shinchuu anymore than she liked Tsume – Grandmother never liked the fact that Shinchuu got pregnant, and had made sure that Shinchuu would never have any more children after Oyubi’s birth.

Before Hidarime-chan left the kennel, she added, “Sakumo-san’s father’s name was Kakashi. I… I think it’s a good name for the baby.”

Tsume studied the baby after Hidarime-chan’s departure. “Scarecrow, huh? Well, you’ve done a pretty good job jumping at noise just like you are one, so I guess it suits you.”

oOoOoOo

Tsume spent the next two days hanging around the doorstep of what she now considered to be the Hatake Den. She only tried once entering through a window because Sakumo-san probably had a nice mat she could sleep on while waiting, but after the firetrap singed off her eyebrows, she figured it was safest to remain outside. The next two nights were spent sporadically sleeping in the kennels, with little Kakashi and Kuromaru tucked close to her side beneath an old wool blanket, in a bed of straw that Nagumi kindly shared. Tsume was always careful to stay out sight of her great-grandmother and sister. She also played hooky from her Academy classes, but mainly because the teachers were completely unsympathetic to her plight.

“If you can’t be here with the baby, then don’t be here at all. Does this look like a free babysitting service?” one teacher had asked Tsume in irritation, before she turned around and yelled at the Akamichi boy for attempting to swing yodeling from the overhead fan.

Babies, Tsume thought, might very well be another type of puppy, but they sure were boring. All they did was poop, pee, eat, and sleep. Kinda like regular puppies did, before their eyes finally opened. Kakashi’s eyes were open though, and sometimes he watched her quietly. His eyes kinda looked like hers, Tsume thought, all small and dark and beady.

On the morning of the third day, tired and worn out from having to wake up multiple times during the night to feed and change the fussing Kakashi, the wind shifted, and she caught a new scent. “Yay, he’s almost here!” she told Kuromaru as she gathered everything up and followed the fresh trail. She bounced across town, humming under her breath, before finally approaching the northeast entrance – a small open door that was only manned by four ANBU. At least these ANBU didn’t seem to think her much of a threat, and spent most of their time ignoring her.

She sat down beside a rock just inside Konoha where she could see the door, and waited patiently for about an hour. After that, bored and restless, she carefully bundled Kakashi and rested him in the shade of the diaper bag – light from its diminished supplies; she had a feeling that Grandmother wasn’t going to be so generous if Tsume ran out before Kakashi’s dad finally made it back – so she and Kuromaru could attempt tree-walking. It looked really easy and kinda fun when she saw her older cousins doing it last week with their ninken, and Grandmother wasn’t around to forbid it.

After falling out of the tree six times and landing once on Kuromaru, Tsume managed to wheedle one of the snickering ANBUs into giving her tips. The ANBU relented, mostly to get rid of her as soon as possible, and also because Tsume reluctantly bribed the man with her last butterscotch cookie. She then resumed, struggling to remember half of what was explained to her. This whole channeling chakra steadily to her feet sounded a lot what she did with her nose, but she couldn’t quite get the hang of splitting the chakra equally for her feet and her nose.

When dusk fell, she had managed to make it mostly up the tree (Kuromaru had made it entirely to the top, happily telling her that he was smarter than all humans, and also more talented, and better-smelling too!) once she figured how to channel to her feet without disrupting the chakra levels at her nose, and decided that was good enough for the day. Tsume played a small game of fetch with Kuromaru in the waning light, but soon grow bored with throwing the stick. “Why can’t _you_ throw it, and then _I_ fetch it for once?” she asked Kuromaru, who stared intently at the stick in her hand.

She was hunkered against the rock, stiff and sore, just after night had fallen. That was when Jiraiya, Tsunade’s younger brother, and Danzo arrived. The only reason Tsume was acquainted with the likes of Jiraiya was because he was Tsunade-hime’s teammate. He had often accompanied Tsunade-hime to the Inuzuka compound for treating Tsume’s head regularly for two months following the whole overwhelming-the-brain incident. Jiraiya had always been kind with her, and she remembered (somewhat fuzzy) the puppet plays he would put on for her from the foot of her bed, his two large hands stuffed into a pair of Hidarime-chan’s socks. They had a simple relationship – Jiraiya could tease her, and she could freely insult him without repercussion. Tsume adored Jiraiya for it.

Senju Nawaki smelled so alike Tsunade that he could be nothing less than immediate family. Danzo just ignored her.

“What are you doing here?” Jiraiya asked with a friendly smile and a welcoming scent; Nawaki watched silently, somewhat shy.

“Waiting,” Tsume grumbled. She had draped Kakashi’s baby blanket around her shoulders and tucked Kakashi inside her shirt, because the early autumn night air was cool enough to make her shiver.

“For who?”

“The White Fang-chan-person-thingy. Kakashi’s dad. He’s coming from that direction.” She pointed at the open doorway and wished she could remember the exact name of Kakashi’s dad. She ignored the way Jiraiya exchanged looks with Nawaki, and the way Danzo turned to watch her with a face as cold and as unsettling as the Great Monument behind them. The moonlight seemed to make him look older.

Jiraiya looked down on her with interest. “How did you know… Ah, Inuzuka, right.” One of the ANBU broke from his guard position long enough to whisper in Danzo’s ear. Tsume wondered if she should increase her hearing like her smelling, and then decided not to. Loud noises always made her head hurt worse. “So, kid.” Jiraiya squatted beside her and grinned. “What else do you know, huh?”

She sniffed. “I know that you’ve spent a lot of time recently at the hot springs. On the woman’s side.” The man’s grin fell of his face, and he nervously looked around. “With _two_ women, actually, including one who works at the barbeque pit over by the Uchiha District.” She made a face. “Oh, eeeewwww, and you did it in the hot springs too? I’ll never bathe or eat barbeque again!”

Jiraiya waved her quiet with his hands, looking nervously at Nawaki, whose ears had gone bright red. “Shhh. Just – yeah, Inuzuka. _Of course_ you’re going to know. So then you must know who’s going to be coming through that gate, there.”

“Yeah. Kakashi’s dad. He’s the White Fang person, see, and I’ve got Kakashi right here.” Jiraiya, after asking for permission, peeled the blanket back and lifted her shirt to look at the baby. “But Kakashi’s dad is moving kinda slow – I guess that’s ‘cause of his injuries.” The other shinobi froze at her announcement. A few leaves rustled across the ground as the wind blew.

Jiraiya slowly rocked back on his heels and studied her for a moment – like she was an interesting bug of some sorts. “What else do you smell – from Hatake Sakumo?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “I smell lots of things. Like how he’s with eleven other people, ten of which aren’t from this village although I don't think that one of the girls counts because Kushina’s in the Academy like me, and they’re coming from a really swampy, salty place – Whirlpool, I think. Kakashi’s dad isn’t the only one who’s wounded though, and six of them are really, really young.”

Jiraiya’s expression was odd as he coaxed more details out of her; he said it was because he had always been fascinated with how the Inuzuka nose worked, “Which yours does quite brilliantly.”

Eager to please anyone who called her brilliant instead of the various names that her great-grandmother seemed fond of, Tsume was happy to tell Jiraiya about how the group of twelve was a party of five females and seven males, that one of the females was menstruating, that four of the males had been wounded and that Hatake Sakumo needed to go straight to the hospital “because the wound smells like really foul meat, and so does the rest of him, too.” She was also able to tell Jiraiya the mixture of cotton and leather clothing and armor they wore, that human blood stained their weapons, they were out of exploding tags though the tags had been used recently, and that the last thing the group had eaten was a shared can of pickled herring. “They’re going to be hungry when they come in,” she added.

“Even what they last ate… Fascinating,” Jiraiya muttered. “And here we didn’t even know how close they were until the runners reported not ten minutes ago that this group is approximately eight kilometers from the village.”

Tsume tried to imagine the distance of eight kilometers. “Is that far?” she asked.

“Tell me, you’ve been waiting here because you can smell Hatake Sakumo coming from this direction. How long have you been waiting?”

“Since this morning.” She couldn’t tell if the look on Jiraiya’s face was good or bad. “That’s when I first smelled him, see, when the wind shifted. It wasn’t blowing from his direction, before then, and I hadn’t been trying to catch his scent.” Oh, the look on Danzo’s face made her want to hide behind the rock.

Jiraiya handed her an apple from his pocket. “What can you tell me about this?”

“It’s not going to be very sweet.” She sniffed. “You bought it at Juro-san’s market earlier this morning when the dew was still on the leaves, and then…” His eyes were wide and surprised as she retraced his steps from the apple stand to where he was standing now, including the various people that he met – if not by name, she was able to identify them by clan or occupation. She was careful not to admit to cheating – she was able to pick most of the scents off his hands and clothes, rather than the apple, which mainly smelled of his pocket and the other apples it had been with. She supposed, if she tried with extra chakra boosting her sense of smell and if Jiraiya asked, she could tell Jiraiya which orchard the apple originated from.

“How come no one’s ever told me the Inuzuka can smell this much detail?”

“Because they can’t,” Danzo replied cooly as she handed the apple back to Jiraiya.

“They can too!” Tsume snapped. Just… not _all_ the time, like she could.

“You sure? Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” Jiraiya muttered as he hurried away, juggling the apple between two restless hands. Danzo turned away to speak to the ANBU again before also departing.

Kakashi began fussing. Since Nawaki volunteered, Tsume was quite happy to show him to feed Kakashi. She rooted around through the diaper bag and made a face when she realized she was down to her last two cans of formula. She showed Nawaki how to mix the formula with the water jug she also carried, and then demonstrated how to hold the bottle to make up for Kakashi’s high palate.

“Wow,” said Nawaki as he stared down at the squirming bundle. “You’re really good at this, Tsume-chan.”

She flushed with delight, enjoying the warm tingle in her chest, and fought down the desire to do a triumphant fist pump in the air. Two people thought she was doing awesome! Three days of taking care of a male pup with virtually no adult supervision had left her tired and often wondering if she wasn’t secretly messing up the poor kid, but it made her feel better to know she was doing something right. As Nawaki attempted to burp Kakashi, Jiraiya returned.

Jiraiya sat cross-legged in front of Tsume. “Okay,” he began, handing her the apple, “I just spoke to Inuzuka Oyubi – and she said that you’re still in the Academy. When do you expect to graduate?”

“Next year, sir.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to? Your memory _is_ a weak point of yours.”

“Of course!” If she could _just_ remember all the stupid different Shinobi rules.

“Come find me then, kid.”

She grinned. “Shouldn’t be a problem. South wall of the hot springs on the woman’s side, approximately every day about two unless you’re out on missions?”

Jiraiya quickly shushed her as Nawaki went bright red again – but it wasn’t soon enough.

“What’s this about the hot springs?” A busty blonde loomed over Jiraiya, killing intent spilling around her. Jiraiya immediately disappeared in a poof. Nawaki attempted to look very innocent as his patting increased against Kakashi’s back. Tsunade’s eyes shifted from person to person, and then she knelt down in front of Tsume. “Dare I ask? No – don’t answer that. I’ll just kill him the next time we spar. Well, since you’re here and I’m here, let’s see how Tsume-chan is doing.”

Tsunade was as brisk and blunt as Grandmother Shinzou, but her hands were gentle as she cupped the back of Tsume’s head and applied enough pressure that Tsume tilted forward. Tsume’s vision was filled with cleavage – glorious, lovely cleavage. Someday, when _she_ was a fully-mature adult, she would have magnificent breasts like Tsunade-hime and cousins Tekubi and Oyubi, and she wouldn’t have any qualms about showing her bodacious boobs to the world… The questing chakra that invaded her skull was cool and impersonal. She felt it sliding and probing, and knew better to fluctuate her chakra. After a moment, the questing chakra mostly receded – she felt a few patches of it remaining, and knew they’d stay there for the next few days.

“Well, looks like there’s still ongoing headway being made with your long-term memory.” Tsunade tapped Tsume’s forehead. “Which I’m sure will please your grandmother. Unfortunately, the recovery of the analytical processes stalled, and the amygdala’s damage is permanent.” At Tsume’s confused expression, Tsunade translated. “It means you’ll have a better time remembering your continuing bouts of fearless stupidity.”

Oh goody – hopefully that meant Tsume wasn’t going to commit as many social faux paux, like blunder thoughtlessly and insult the First Hokage’s granddaughter by asking three different visits in a row, _“Who’s the busty broad stinking of incense?”_

“Thank you,” Tsume said to Tsunade’s bust, giving it a forlorn and envious look as Tsunade straightened upward. Nawaki was looking everywhere but at them, rubbing Kakashi’s back in tight little circles instead of patting.

“Who’s this?” Tsunade asked as her eyes gleamed.

“Hatake Sakumo-san’s son,” Nawaki replied. He didn’t protest when Tsunade took the baby and gave him a sharp once-over. Kakashi whined and squirmed at the feeling of her questing chakra.

“Bilirubin is high,” Tsunade said. “And a bit dehydrated. He should be fed more often. How old is he?”

“Okay,” Tsume said obediently. “And he’s three days old.” Tsunade’s gaze was sharp as it turned on Tsume – then her eyes widened in horror.

“Don’t tell me – _you’ve_ been taking care of the baby since he was born?”

“Well, yeah. Someone had to until his sire gets back home, and Grandmother picked me.” And probably the only reason Tsume had been picked was because she had been eagerly standing outside the birthing room, ready to meet Hidarime-chan’s baby, and was therefore the first person Grandmother could pawn off the unwanted bundle of joy.

“Inuzuka Shinzou expects _you_ to take care of a newborn?”

Tsume bristled and hurried to blink away tears of frustration. It was warranted, she supposed, because Grandmother’s opinion of Tsume was so low that she often had to dig deep holes to find it. But just because her brain wasn’t the best out there didn’t mean she was _incompetent_. Sure, she sometimes had problems remembering when she last fed Kakashi, but it seemed like she was always feeding him until all the moments blurred into each other. The pleasure she felt when Nawaki complimented her was still there and she was going to hold onto it forever and forever.

Taking care of Kakashi was the first time she had done anything without someone hovering all the time, ready to nitpick and remind – even Kuromaru came with constant instruction and supervision the first six weeks. All of Tsume’s first attempts at _anything_ ended in miserable failure – just like her tree climbing and trying to see how far she could push the limit of her sense of smell – but if little Kakashi was still alive and unharmed by the time she was able to deliver him to his father, then that would mean that she was able to do something right the first time she tried it.

And no one – not even the great Tsunade-hime – was going to make her feel otherwise.

Tsume grabbed back Kakashi and cuddled him and Kuromaru close in her lap, drawing her knees up to her chest like she was trying to shield herself from the world. After a moment, she said, “You need to be checking on Hatake-san. His smell shifted – I think he passed out.” Tsunade glanced sharply at Nawaki, who stood immediately. “Yeah, definitely passed out. I smell a lot of panic right now.”

Tsunade glared down at Tsume. “If this is a lie… Well, I’ll just let your grandmother know. Nawaki, go tell Jiraiya and Dan to meet up with me with the incoming Uzushio refugees.”

Tsume curled tighter into a ball, and tried to ignore everything but her two little boys, who seemed to be the only creatures out there that had no expectation but love and food from her. _My puppies._


	5. Alpha years - Chapter Two

Tsunade returned first - a deadly whirlwind that glittered gold beneath the moonlight. She paused long enough at Tsume’s rock to congratulate her. “Good girl. Hatake’s infection had gone septic. Were it not for your early warning, Hatake would’ve died from the blood poisoning. I stabilized him for further transport, but now I need to get to the hospital for supplies and surgery.”

An unconscious Hatake Sakumo was next, carried on the back of someone Tsume didn’t recognize, but smelled like he was sexually intimate with Tsunade. The unknown man didn’t say anything to Tsume, didn’t even pause – but Tsume thought he smiled at her as he sped by.

Last to arrive was a small bunch of bedraggled refugees from Uzushio that Jiraiya led in place of the now-missing Sakumo. Most of them were quiet and subdued as ANBU collected demographics from them, except for a redheaded girl a little younger than Tsume, whose scent was quite familiar. She identified herself as Uzumaki Kushina, and Kushina had a lot more energy than anyone should who escaped a war-torn island and traveled nearly nonstop for the last week to Konoha. (Tsume remembered Kushina by appearance and scent from the Academy, if not by name - she envied the long, smooth, glorious red hair from a distance.)

“Settle down kid, this won’t take long,” one of the ANBU told her impatiently.

Kushina fidgeted in line. “But I’ve been here before – I’m even enrolled in the Academy. You should already have my information – Sakumo-senpai is going to be all right, isn’t he?”

“Go sit with Inuzuka Tsume and Hatake Kakashi,” Jiraiya finally told Kushina with exasperation, pointing her to Tsume’s stone.

Tsume knew she wouldn’t be able to kick Jiraiya’s shin from here, but maybe if she aimed a pebble just right… Kushina obeyed begrudgingly. She walked with a limp, but that didn’t stop her from throwing herself down beside Tsume with more force than was warranted. Kushina smelled primarily of herself (something that reminded Tsume of sun-warmed soil and fishcakes), Whirlpool, anger, grief, guilt, hunger, fire, and pickled herring. It was a weird combination.

“Here.” Tsume offered Kushina some of the jerky she kept stashed in the diaper bag for a snack. She wished she had a butterscotch cookies to offer. 

Kushina studied Tsume’s offering as if she expected that it would bite her, and then pinched it between two fingers. “Why are you feeding me?” She had a husky voice that Tsume thought sounded really nice.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you? Don’t worry – I feed Kakashi here when he gets hungry.” Tsume basked momentarily in a glow of pride as she patted Kakashi.

Kushina reluctantly sniffed the jerky. “Except he’s a baby – you kinda _have_ to feed them, believe it.” She seemed to shrink into herself with grief, and bit viciously into the jerky. “I had a younger brother. We buried him in the sea.” After she had eaten all the jerky, she drank from the water jug that Tsume offered. By now, Jiraiya was calling Kushina over for her turn with the ANBU. “Is that – is that Sakumo-senpai’s baby?” Kushina asked as she stood.

“Yeah.”

“He – he was really excited to tell me about the son or daughter that he expected to meet at home. If it hadn’t been for me – if I hadn’t been so stupid, maybe he wouldn’t be hurt…”

“Now, Kushina.”

She left without saying another word, although the backward glance she sent Tsume held a potential of friendship.

Tsume spent the night, huddling with Korumaru and Kakashi for warmth, beside the rock; it was a change from her usual bed of hay.

oOoOoOo

The next morning, Tsume was determined to visit Sakumo-senpai (that sounded better in her mind than “Kakashi’s dad”). The nurse at the front desk wouldn’t tell her anything regarding which room he was at or even his current condition. “That is confidential given his rank, and you are too young for visiting, anyway.”

But Tsume was a ninja, albeit in training, which meant she had an arsenal of interrogation tools and techniques at her disposal. Widening her eyes and making her lower lip tremble, Tsume said with just a teeny, tiny whimper, “Can I at least have his room number to send a congratulations, you’re a new dad and get well soon card? See, this is his son! Kakashi was born when Sakumo-senpai was on his mission, so he hasn’t met him yet. I thought really good news like that would help him recover faster.”

Kakashi took to interrogation with aplomb. He wiggled a little and cooed, and looked as cute as newborns normally do when they weren’t sloppy, squished, and wrinkled after the whole passing through a vagina thing. In fact, Kakashi looked very angelic, with his soft, fuzzy silver hair and sweetly curved lips.

Kakashi, combined with the sight of Tsume’s perfected _Puppy Eyes no Jutsu_ , melted the nurse’s heart. “Oh, that’s so sweet of you! Well, I don’t see any harm to it if you’re just going to send a card. Address it to room 311A.”

Tsume smiled and thanked the nurse profusely before wandering off to find a bathroom “to change Kakashi’s diaper.” She observed the waiting area – saw a large potted yucca plant in the corner that must’ve been imported from the Wind Country, different toys for waiting families, and couple of magazines possibly from the time of the First Hokage. She pretended to get lost in one of the first-floor hallways to get a lay of how the rooms were numbered. Despite being caught, reprimanded severely, and then frog-marched out of the building by a stern-faced medic, Tsume felt she had done remarkably well with her reconnaissance. 

Kuromaru met with her outside, and he forgot his sulk over being left behind the moment he saw her. She loved on him for a little while, and then they set out to inspect the parameters of the building. “Remember,” she told Kuromaru in a loud whisper, “we’re supposed to be sneaky, like ninjas.” He barked softly in agreement.

Jiraiya effortlessly caught her trying to sneak through the open window in the second story men’s bathroom.

“Hey there. Uh… just what are you doing?” He leaned out of the window, his expression amused. Tsume dangled by one hand from the windowsill – her tree-walking exercises had served her well enough in scaling the wall, until her feet lost their grip. Her other arm supported Kakashi, who was secured within her shirt, while the diaper bag hung from around her neck. The pressure of the depleted diaper bag made it hard to breathe, and she hoped that she wouldn’t accidentally hang herself.

“Ummm… playing ninja?”

“You sure you weren’t such trying to take a peek at the goings-on in a men’s bathroom?” Jiraiya flashed her a congratulatory thumbs-up. “We’ll make a prime peeper out of you yet.”

“What? Ew, no! I’m not a perv like you!” She could feel her fingers going numb, and she scrambled with her feet. “Besides, the woman’s bathroom didn’t have an open window – I already checked. I’m just trying to get in to see Sakumo-senpai, is all.” Her fingers slipped. Tsume swallowed her scream as she fell backwards, and braced herself for a painful landing.

Jiraiya caught her at the bottom, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. He set her down and brushed her coat off. “You’re better off sneaking in at night. Besides, Sakumo probably isn’t even awake yet after his surgery.”

“I know he’s in 311A.”

“Do you, now. I thought that his room number was supposed to be kept confidential given his rank and the enemies he made so far this war.”

Tsume tried to sound mysterious and all-knowing. “I have my ways of gathering information.”

“Ah. The nose knows, right?”

Well, that hadn’t been it, but it was as good as any explanation, so she winked. “Right.” The hospital stank of death, infection, antiseptic, pain, loss, terror, and so many other overwhelming odors, so it wasn’t a place she liked to sharpen her senses in. She minimized her olfaction to the same level as Kuromaru’s, which made it difficult to pick out exact details of Sakumo-senpai.

“Well, good luck with that, though I recommend that you hold off your infiltration until night – a lot less people around at that time, especially when it’s hard to find good hiding places in hospitals. Now, I’ve got some things I have to do.” Instead of leaving immediately, Jiraiya poked at her diaper bag. It was disturbingly light and mostly empty by now. He noticed the way her face fell when she thought once more of how little she had left for Kakashi. Then, in a loud whisper, he added, “The Labor and Delivery ward with all the newborn supplies is on the south end of the hospital’s third floor.” 

Oh, that was good to know! She smiled at Jiraiya, and then threw her arms around him in a hug. “Thank you!” she said. He patted her back. Since she couldn’t hide in a secret place if people came, then she was going to have to hide out in the open. Which meant she’d have to practice disguising herself as something that no one would look to closely at. “Come on, Kuromaru. We’ve got work to do.”

oOoOoOo

Hey – diapers! Ooooh, more formula! A special sort of nipple designed for high palates? “Jackpot!”

Tsume was feeling very ninja (and that all her extra work over the last four days, sneaking around town and ambushing the Uchiha Police with Kuromaru and Kakashi, had prepared her well) as she and her two mini-cohorts-in-crime quietly raided the supply room in the Labor & Delivery department in the hospital. Well, she did the raiding; her cohorts stayed quiet. She kept her nose open for any approaching persons as she restocked the diaper bag, but not too open. Then she had to return a few things when she realized that the diaper bag was far too heavy to carry and probably wouldn’t even fit through the doorway anyway.

Wait – was that a sling? You could carry babies in a sling? Tsume studied the directions for the contraption’s package, found them to be too complicated to understand, but stuffed it into the bag anyway. She was more of a hands-on learner, and she really liked the idea of being able to carry Kakashi but keep her hands free without stuffing him down her shirt. Sakumo-senpai would appreciate it too, she felt, since she had seen how his arm had been bound tight when Tsunade-hime’s lover brought him into the village.

She exited after that with the diaper bag hanging heavily off her shoulder, Kakashi quietly awake with wide eyes watching her from the crook of her elbow, and Kuromaru following at her heels.

When she rounded the corner at the far end of the hall, she said, “People are going to start asking questions when they notice an old creep like you stalking someone cute and innocent like me.” She didn’t even look at Danzo as he leaned against the wall, one knee raised with the foot pressed flat against the wall and his arms crossed.

“There’s nothing cute and innocent about someone who’s stealing hospital supplies,” he replied, falling in step behind her. She felt really uncomfortable with him at her back, but he didn’t smell like he was going to attack her. And since he wasn’t raising the alarm or stopping her, then clearly he was giving her covert permission to carry on, right?

“I’m not stealing! I’m just collecting before payment exchanges hands. I made a list, and I’m going to give it to Sakumo-senpai’s nurse so they can charge his account. And I wouldn’t have done it if people didn’t ignore me. Or kick me out of the supply room at the compound.” Or just stalked her without being helpful, she added silently.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“They wouldn’t let me come in during visiting hours. The stupid nurses said that Kakashi and I didn’t have the proper clearance level.” Besides, bed was a pile of straw and Nagumi, which wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep. Or a rock beside the northeast gate, where she had been nudged awake at dawn by the changing shift of ANBU.

“And yet here you are.”

“I figured that if I was old enough to sneak into the hospital through a window in the men’s bathroom, then I was old enough to visit Sakumo-senpai. Someone should check on those windows, you know, ‘cause that means other people can come through them. I don’t know if anyone’s told Sakumo-senpai about Kakashi yet, and I just ran out of formula before I got here, and Tsunade-hime said that he needed to be fed more.”

“What if Sakumo’s not awake?”

Tsume didn’t answer. She froze at the swift approach of a night staff, and then hurried pressed herself up against the wall. She raised a finger to her lips to Danzo before henging herself, Kakashi, and the diaper bag into a remarkably accurate-looking large potted yucca. Kuromaru crouched out of sight behind the pot. The staffsperson was a janitor with a mop slung over his shoulder. The janitor paused long enough to eye the yucca plant, before deciding that its odd displacement was less important than getting away from the dark, dangerous expression on Danzo’s face.

Once the janitor was out of hearing range, Tsume released the henge. “That was _close_ ,” she told Kakashi with a nudge of her nose against his. Kakashi gave her an open-mouthed smile.

“Interesting,” Danzo said.

“Kakashi? Well, I had been thinking of making him into a diversion.” Tsume originally thought of leaving Kakashi in the middle of the hallway as a diversion while she hid at the first sound of approach. When the approaching person bent to pick Kakashi up off the floor, she would’ve bopped them on the head with a broom, and stowed their unconscious body in a closet. Then she realized that there were probably a lot of people she’d have to bop on the head before finally getting to Sakumo-senpai’s room, and she had no idea if there was enough closet space. That, and she really didn’t like the idea of leaving Kakashi on the floor. She knew _exactly_ what had been on the floor.

Tsume was very proud of herself for rejecting this plan. It meant she had the cognitive awareness to think through her stupidity!

“That you could henge him too.”

“Oh, that’s easy. His chakra’s really developed, and he carries his own load when we henge.”

The smell of surprise from Danzo was strong and not at all what she expected. “…what?”

“Well, Kakashi’s not henging. I’m doing it for him with the right nudge, but he provides the chakra himself.”

The smell of surprise grew. “He’s a _baby_.” She glanced at Danzo; if the expression in his eyes and the gape of his mouth was anything to go by, apparently babies being able to help with henge weren’t normal.

(What was _normal_ , anyway?)

“He’s going to be a talented puppy,” Tsume said proudly, as if this was something she came across every day, no problem. She had actually been surprised herself. They had practiced in the afternoon once she realized the whole bop-the-heads-and-stow-in-a-closet plan was a wash up. She practiced henge with the diaper bag and Kakashi because who looks twice at yucca plants anyway, and was surprised to find that when she triggered the henge, Kakashi seemed to push his chakra outward. Then he had smiled at her for the very first time she had ever known him, as if amused by her shocked expression.

It was just like with the regular clan ninken puppies, she had realized, who contributed their own chakra when the Inuzuka mistress henged or bunshined them. Tsume wasn’t too sure about how the whole process worked out – it probably involved way too much complicated math and calculations.

Two more henges as yucca plants later due to approaching night staff, Sakumo found them.

“I thought…” He leaned rather heavily against the wall as feverish sweat dotted his forehead and plastered his white hair to his head; blood stained through his bound arm. He also looked ghastly white. “I thought an Inuzuka was around.”

At last – the end of her long mission was at hand. Tsume held Kakashi out. “Hi, I’m Tsume, Hidarime-chan’s younger sister, and this is your son, Kakashi. He’s yours now.”

Danzo caught Sakumo as he passed out.

“Gosh! You think maybe I should’ve broken the news to him a little more gently? Maybe been a little more tactful?” she asked Danzo with uncertainty as he slung Sakumo’s limp body over his shoulder. 

“ _You_ wouldn‘t know what tact was even if it mugged you in broad daylight with its name tattooed across its forehead.”

Danzo didn’t have to carry Sakumo far. The man had unhooked himself from his IVs, so Danzo left to find a night nurse after not-very-gently dumping Sakumo onto the mattress. Feeling guilty, Tsume pulled and arranged the covers back over Sakumo. At the sound of Danzo returning with staff, Tsume hurriedly stowed the diaper bag behind a near-by wooden stand that was covered with flowers and chocolates, and then she, Kuromaru, and Kakashi hid under the hospital bed. They quietly listened to the whispered conversation, of how Danzo had found Sakumo wandering the halls.

“That’s odd for him, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. His fever hasn’t spiked, but it’s not broken yet. It may be another day before the fever finally breaks.” The night nurse reconnected the IV lines, checked Sakumo’s vital signs, and then asked Danzo if he wanted to leave yet.

“No. I require a report from Sakumo the moment he awakes. I shall wait here until the morning, and then a subordinate will take my place.”

The night nurse murmured her understanding as she departed.

“You can come out now.” Tsume scooted forward on her belly until Danzo reached down and hauled her upright by her collar. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

“I’m supposed to get Kakashi to Sakumo-senpai. That’s what Grandmother ordered me to do. But you _know_ that already.”

“Like a mission.”

“That’s right.” Tsume squirmed as Danzo studied her; it felt like his dark gaze was flailing her skin open. But he didn’t smell angry or impatient – just curious.

“I am Hatake Sakumo’s… senpai.”

“You’re his ANBU squad leader.”

He glared at her.

“What? You were in the same building as the ANBU and just now told the nurse he’s supposed to report to you. I got cousins in ANBU. I know the drill.”

His glare didn’t change. “He reports to me. Your mission concerns him, so you will also report to me.” Danzo sat down in a chair in front of her, his arms crossed.

Tsume glared at him, even though it sounded like a reasonable conclusion. “ _You_ called me a lousy ninja. Why should I?”

One eyebrow went up at her. She wondered if she could ever do the whole raise-one-eyebrow-in-disdain look. “What did I say, exactly?”

“You said I was soft!” It made her head hurt to remember exactly what he said that first day, but the sting of his words had helped cement most of the details. “You said that I was dumb and reckless!” And then she thought that it wasn’t _fair_ at all that he could smell this amused with her.

“Even lousy ninjas have to follow their CO’s orders. And…” His voice trailed off as he studied her. Then he smiled – it looked like it should contain fangs dripping with poison. “And lousy ninjas have the potential to be... _extraordinary_. So start from when you first received the mission: when you were given responsibility of Kakashi.”

So Tsume told him. Danzo made her retell it with more detail, because, “Well, I washed Kakashi’s stinky butt first, then tracked down his family scent to Sakumo-senpai’s home, then waited three days until I could smell Sakumo-senpai coming from outside the village, and then snuck in tonight because they wouldn’t let me see him earlier,” wasn’t enough to satisfy the man. “Why do I have to tell all of you this? I can’t remember most of it!” Tsume whined, flopping backwards on the floor. She wanted to roll around in the blanket until she and Kakashi looked like an eggroll, and fall asleep. She didn’t like the way Danzo wanted to run her brain through a ringer to squeeze out every last detail.

“Sit upright and behave like a kunoichi on duty.”

Tsume groaned and sat upright. Then her report had to go on pause while she prepared another bottle of formula for a now-fussy Kakashi. By the time Kakashi was fed and burped, Danzo appeared satisfied with her report.

“How do I say this?” He tapped the X-shaped scar on his chin as he studied her. Tsume decided to busy herself with changing Kakashi’s diaper, even though it was only wet. He waited until she had finished. “You bumbled blind through this mission and would’ve wound up looking like the abhorrent fool you are were it not for your exceptional nose, with probably nothing more to show for it than a sick or dead baby.”

Tsume folded her knees to her chest and hugged Kakashi close.

“You operated with little information and less sense, blundered aimlessly around the village, and had absolutely no idea how you were going to complete the mission. Not that I’m surprised – overemotional, irrational people rarely have thought except in hindsight. It is your luck that Konoha is a friendly environment free of danger, instead of an active warzone.”

She hunched low.

“Despite your lack of aim and direction, and mainly through accident and _very_ good luck, you managed to obtain training on caring for your bundle, keep the baby safe and fed, alert your superiors to a fellow Konoha nin’s life-threatening status, seduce information without raising alarm, infiltrate a forbidden building with a plausible disguise in the possible event of being discovered, replenish your depleted supplies with stolen goods without alerting those on watch, and eventually found the one to whom you were to deliver your assigned bundle. You operated as a free agent, with no oversight from an experienced team leader, nor did you make any attempt at recruiting assistance beyond figuring out how to feed the baby.”

“Who was I supposed to ask?” Tsume could barely say anything through the choking in her throat. She knew where this was going – she felt like she getting dressed down, and she wasn’t even sure _what_ she did wrong. Well, she did sort of know, but it wasn’t like the way he had described at all, especially in that tone of voice, even if it sounded like she had done everything right. _That_ only meant the worst was yet to come. “I didn’t know what I was doing! The clan just – Grandmother just _threw_ Kakashi at me and expected me to do something, and there he was, all little and naked and just so brand new – just a _simpleton_ like me, except his brains never went to mush. It’s clan business, but they didn’t want to have any part in it – even his own mother. Kakashi…” It pained her to admit this. She swallowed past the lump, but couldn’t keep her voice from cracking. “Kakashi wasn’t wanted.” 

Danzo sighed as she rubbed furiously at her nose and eyes. “You are an overemotional, irrational child, not an idiot. No one as successful as you could be dumb, even if you were assisted by an exceptionally good fortune.”

“You said-”

“I said that you were ignorant, which is a lack of education – _not_ an indication of intelligence. You failed to ask question and therefore _kept_ the scope of your knowledge very limited, and you refused to understand the political ramifications of your situation. Forewarned is forearmed; lack of preparation will get someone killed faster than being weak. What I had told you at Hatake’s home was also before I realized just how strong your nose was and that asking questions, for you, would be superfluous – in this, your inexperience is very clear, because you could divine so much information in a single breath that you simply didn’t know how to par it down to just the relevant details. But that is something you can learn with time, good teaching, and practice.

“But a shinobi or a kunoichi without purpose is useless. _Purpose_ is the reason for becoming a shinobi, for doing what needs to be done – you must be prepared to do whatever it takes: to kill, lie, steal, cheat, and fuck whoever or whatever is required to complete your mission for Konoha – _she_ must come first, above all things, to ensure that she survives and flourishes despite all obstacles. Your lack of purpose left you aimless throughout this mission, and ill-prepared for delivering your charge. You say you want to be a kunoichi, but for what reason? Because everyone else in your clan does? Because this is a war and everyone must contribute to the effort? Because that’s the expectation of your family? Because it’s cool or awesome, or whatever the young people are calling it? Your previous answer had been without conviction or purpose. Kunoichi are like the weapons they are named for – and weapons have a purpose.

“So tell me, _why_ do you want to be a kunoichi?”

He didn’t push her for an answer after that. Tsume studied Kakashi’s face; he was asleep now, eyes closed with his face turned towards her breath. She wiggled a finger into his curled hand, and fought back tears as his itty-bitty hand closed around it. She thought about the last four days, and then of the last four years, when she had struggled so hard to heal and overcome her handicaps.

Why _did_ she want to be a kunoichi?

“Can I answer in the morning?” she asked quietly, not looking up from Kakashi. “I’m really tired right now.”

His answer was slow in coming. “Fair enough. But know this, Inuzuka Tsume: despite the many things you did wrong, you did remarkably well. There are full-grown chuunin out there who would have failed miserably if given a similar mission with the same expectations and the same lack of information, and they do not have the excuse of your inexperience or youth.”

“Thank you, sir.” She felt strung out and raw, and all she wanted to do was sleep with her two puppies. Danzo didn’t say anything else as she wrapped her companions up with her in the blanket, curled up beneath Sakumo’s hospital bed, and fell asleep.

oOoOoOo

She awoke the next morning in bed, not sure of what disturbed her sleep. “Wzziitt?” She was pressed against Sakumo’s side, and he appeared to be trying to feed Kakashi with one arm firmly secured in a sling. Kakashi was carefully propped in the crook of the sling.

“Ah, good morning. So glad you could join us.” Sakumo’s smile for her was large and bright, even though his eyes looked glazed over. He looked cleaned up from last night and didn’t seem to have a fever. Tsume absently thought that her sister had rather nice taste in good-looking men. “The captain told me all about you.”

“Wasn’t I sleeping on the floor?”

“I thought you looked a bit uncomfortable, and then figured that my bed was large enough for all of us. Though the nurses are a bit crabby with you being here, and even crabbier with the fact that Shimura Danzo scared them, and I do believe that when Tsunade-hime finds out what happened, there will be fireworks between her and the captain. And not the pretty fireworks. More like the explode-in-your-face and leave you scarred for life kind of fireworks, which is to be expected between the Slug Princess and the War Hawk. I’m so glad I’m going to get to watch that. It’s not often you get to see epic battles between such epic legends. Except that Danzo isn’t really a legend. He’s more of a boogeyman, isn’t he?”

Kuromaru barked agreement from where he nestled between Sakumo’s feet.

Tsume wrinkled her nose at him. “How many pain pills did they give you?”

“No pills. It’s coming straight at me through the IV, so I’m higher than a kite right now.” Sakumo giggled as he turned a loving gaze on Kakashi.

“I tried to talk them into keeping Kakashi,” Tsume said hurriedly. “I told them that he’s a male puppy just like Kuromaru right here, but Grandmother wouldn’t allow it.”

Sakumo’s smile was gentle as he reached over and ruffled her wild hair. His IV lines brushed the tip of her nose. “I knew that it would come to this, Tsume-chan – I know what the Inuzuka clan does to its children. If it was a boy, he would never know his mother, and if it was a girl, she would never know her father. One way or another, my child is going to be half an orphan, kept away from one parent. I…I can’t say I regret signing the contract, I suppose, but I’m glad the baby is a boy. I’d rather have a son and know him, than a daughter whom I couldn’t know. But he does have the world’s best aunt, don’t you think? And your eyes, too. And I hope, in time, your heart.”

That was really nice to hear, to know that Kakashi was wanted. Tsume wondered if her sire ever felt anything like that, especially when she got into school yard brawls that inexplicably dragged his son into the heart of the mess because he was too slow to get away in time. She twisted around, and then knelt upright to face him. “Can I – can I still be his aunt?” She desperately wanted to be wanted, too.

“I think Kakashi needs an aunt like you, and you need a nephew like him. Seems like the perfect solution to me.”

Tsume’s answering smile felt like it was going to split her face in half. And even when Tsunade found them, yelled at Tsume until her face turned purple, and then threw her and Kuromaru outside the window (Tsume landed on her feet with only a little bit of bruising, despite it being from the third floor), she still felt happy about what she did.

Then she raised her nose in the air, and went searching. After all, she had an answer to give.

oOoOoOo

“Gosh,” she said as she and Kuromaru were surrounded by very pointy ANBU weaponry and different masks, “this is really awkward.”

“Really?” a dry voice asked. Weapons dropped and the tight circle of ANBU parted to reveal Danzo, whose expression was wry. It was the first time she saw him armed and dressed in the reinforced black uniform and white breast plate of ANBU, and he loomed large and dangerous despite being surrounded by taller persons. A white mask, with the painted image of a black tree sprawling across its face, hung loose around his neck. “Didn’t we just go through this a few days ago? I see I’m going to have to cram in some _remedial training_ before I leave for Suna, if _a ten year old girl is able to infiltrate our headquarters without being stopped_.”

“Oh! Oh!” Tsume’s hand shot in the air as she ignored the sudden stench of fear and resentment that surrounded her. She did a wiggly dance in her excitement. “I have the answer to your question!”

He crouched down to match her eye-to-eye. “So, why do you want to be a kunoichi?”

“I want to be a kunoichi because I’m going to get really smart and powerful and then become head of my clan and change it, so that way we never split up our children between mothers and fathers because we’re all family in Konoha, and because no puppy should ever _not_ be wanted.”

His not-so-nice smile made shivers run down her spine. “It has potential,” he murmured.


	6. Alpha years - Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Dogs' sense of smell overpowers our own by orders of magnitude—it's 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute, scientists say. "Let's suppose they're just 10,000 times better," says James Walker, former director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, who, with several colleagues, came up with that jaw-dropping estimate during a rigorously designed, oft-cited study. "If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well."  
> Dogs' dazzling sense of smell, by Peter Johnson.  
> https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/dogs-sense-of-smell/
> 
> Dude. Kishomoto totally missed the train on Kakashi's or Kiba's Super Power, since their noses are, like, 1000x stronger than a ninken. I think I'd prefer that over the Hyuuga vision.
> 
> I, on the other hand, can barely smell a 10 day corpse. True story. I even vacuumed the living room without noticing how bad the odor was.

As the sun set on the day of the Academy graduation, Tsume was found on the embankment of the Naka River. During the war, graduations were only allowed once a year, in mid-August. Her eleventh birthday had just been a week prior, and she didn’t look like she was in a celebratory mood. She looked like a hedgehog gone sour, her untamed hair poking wildly in all directions. She sat on the grass beside Kuromaru, knees drawn up to her chest, and threw pebbles into the water. She watched as the ripples spread out from the pebble and slowly swept downstream. When the ripples were out of sight, she threw another. Her little blue heart sunk with every pebble.

She didn’t look up as Sakumo, carrying little Kakashi in a sling across his chest, sat down beside her, although Kuromaru lifted his eyes and let his tail thump once in acknowledgement. Kakashi was tinkering with a Rubik cube, frustrated that he was unable to get all the colors lined up as immediately as his father had. “I saw some of your clan at the ceremonies, but I didn’t see you,” Sakumo said gently, crouching on the side opposite from Korumaru.

Tsume pressed her forehead against her knees and crossed her feet, toes over toes.

“I know how disappointed you must be. You studied very hard.”

She tried not to breathe, because breathing would make her cry. Kuromaru whined and nudged her elbow with his wet nose.

“On the bright side, this gives you a lot of extra time to study for a successful graduation next year, and I’ll be accepting a genin team then. I wouldn’t mind having you on my team.”

“’Mmm not going.”

“What’s that?”

She raised her face, starkly bare as always of her clan’s markings, and stared at the river. “Grandmother said that she’s not going to spend any more money to let a mush-for-brains simpleton go through the Academy and fail again, and even if I did graduate I’d still be useless, because I’d get killed fetching a cat or something dumb on a D-rank mission before getting into a war zone.”

Sakumo remained patiently silent. After stewing in her frustrations, Tsume’s next words came bursting out. “I don’t get it – it’s all these stupid, worthless numbers! What kind of enemy nin is just going to let you stand there while you whip out a piece of a paper to calculate the velocity of the wind against the force of your thrown kunai to see how you need to turn it so many degrees with so much added force in order to strike him? And the Shinobi Rules are just stupid, sitting there and saying that shinobi should never show their emotions – that’s just a big fat lot of uselessness right there, because no matter how good you hide your emotions from me, I’m always going to be able to smell them!”

Tsume buried her face back in her knees again and tried valiantly not to cry. She wasn’t successful; her heart cried too.

Sakumo rubbed her back until her sobbing turned into sniffles. “So, if you can’t go through the Academy and try again, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” And she truly didn’t. As long as her great-grandmother was the Clan Head and Queen Alpha Bitch, everyone was going to treat Tsume in virtually the same manner. Which meant that she wouldn’t get any training of any sorts outside of the few clanswomen who had taken Tsume under their wings. “Maybe I can talk Aunt Natsumi into an apprenticeship.” Inuzuka Natsumi did her own thing with an ongoing independent study (Hidarime called it “a lifelong obsession, really,”) without regard to the Clan Head, and was nice to Tsume, but Sakumo knew that Natsumi wasn’t quite all there in manner or appearance, and that’s hard to beat when your standards were the ANBU, home of shinobi not quite all there in manner or appearance.

“Well, what if someone else paid for your ongoing Academy lessons?”

“I can’t afford them. And I don’t know if I’d be able to go back even if you’re paying, if that’s what you’re offering. What if Grandmother’s right? What if I fuck up all over again and waste your money?”

He frowned at her heart’s uncertainty and mistrust. “Well, aside from how I’ve got lots of money to waste, because there’s no place to spend it at the warfront… What if you did pass and graduate? Wouldn’t it be worth it then?”

“I’m a failure – a useless meat shield. I can’t do anything right.”

Sakumo sighed at that, and then stood. “Nothing I say will change your mind, so I’ll let someone else say it. Come with me.” When she didn’t move, he grabbed her beneath her armpits and hauled her upright. Then, just because Tsume shouldn’t be such a somber person, he dug his fingers into her ribcage.

She shrieked with laughter and kicked him in the shin.

Tsume was still morose and silent as she followed him, but her eyes got wider and wider as they approached what was supposed to be a nondescript building – a minor post for ANBU, which in reality was the headquarters for Torture and Interrogation. Even if she didn’t know what the building truly was, she was catching the scents associated with torture, and the known shinobi who dealt with such. Tsume stopped in the middle of the street. “I… I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”

“At first, I thought that Danzo might be able to say something that would make a larger impact on you, except he’s currently in Wind.” Sakumo wasn’t quite sure _why_ Danzo was interested in Tsume except that she had impressed him with her “sheer and utter dumb luck” – she was too undisciplined, too emotional, too unpredictable for Danzo’s preference in ninjas, people, or anything really, even if she had an exceptional Inuzuka nose. Of course, Danzo also expressed that Sakumo’s one saving grace was that Sakumo was good enough to get himself out of the scrapes he inadvertently got tangled in. Sakumo was also very careful never to let Danzo realize that he got into half of those scrapes because it riled Danzo hilariously so.

Danzo’s intentions didn’t strike Sakumo as… not exactly honorable? Less than trustworthy? Sakumo found it hard to clarify his suspicions toward Danzo’s interest. Really, were it anyone else asking about the letters that Tsume addressed to Sakumo in the battlefront, one would think it was due to homesickness, and wanting that little bit of normalcy from home. But this was _Shimura_ _Danzo_ – Sakumo’s ANBU squad leader, one of the strongest shinobi in all of Konoha, and a man whose mind was a cold, reptilian steel trap. Danzo lived an austere life influenced by an even more austere philosophy – one that could put the samurai of the Land of Iron to shame. Surely he had better things to do in the middle of a battle in Wind against a battalion of puppeteers than inquire after innocent, easily-influenced ten-year-old girls.

For now though, especially since Danzo so often had his back, Sakumo was willing to wait and watch silently, especially when Tsume’s heart gave a fluttery little skip whenever Danzo was mentioned. “And it’s just as well, I suppose, when I realized that he would tell you that if you wanted to give up on being a kunoichi, then you were absolutely right about being a failure.” He wanted to add more, but Tsume’s fallen face made him feel like he had kicked a puppy. “So, instead, I brought you to Jiraiya-san and Orochimaru-san. They came back from the front to talk specifically to you, and I shouldn’t have to explain what an honor _that_ is. They wouldn’t do that for anyone who’s useless or stupid.”

She shuffled back a few steps. Hope was starting to sing. “I don’t wanna. Jiraiya-san wanted me to come see him after I graduated. But I didn’t. So I can’t.”

Shame and guilt tried to sing louder than hope. Tsume wasn’t scared, but no one can do guilt and shame better than a dog who realizes how much they disappointed their Pack. “It’s not that. He said he needed your nose for something. So, come on. We can’t keep busy men like Jiraiya-san and Orochimaru-san waiting.”

She grumbled and kicked at the dirt as he pulled her across the nearly-empty street. “Jiraiya’s a perv. I bet he’s used to waiting.”

Inside T&I, where the first level was filled with bright lamps and lanterns, Sakumo had to endure lighthearted ribbing about “this ain’t take-your-kid-to-work day!” as he and Tsume identified themselves, and then waited until a masked escort arrived with a couple of hoods.

“Don’t bother,” Sakumo told him as the escort advanced upon them. “They’re just going to sniff everything out.”

“Rules are rules,” their masked escort replied stoically. Tsume and Kuromaru held still as he pulled the hoods over their heads. Alter a moment of hesitation (in which the masked escort took one step towards Kakashi, and Sakumo tensed in clear warning), the escort led them down the bright hall, past a few locked meeting rooms, and in through a door that was slightly ajar. Jiraiya brightened when he saw his visitors. Then he frowned. Behind him, Orochimaru lurked silent and watchful in the shadows.

“You hooded an Inuzuka _and_ her dog? _That_ was superfluous. At least you had the sense to keep your hands off the White Fang’s son.”

The escort’s stoic expression and body posture didn’t change, but Tsume gave him a glare once the hood as removed. “Was that really necessary for just taking me down the hallway, Hyuuga-san?” she demanded.

He sneered at her. “Civilians aren’t even allowed inside this building, and you don’t even have your forehead protector yet.” She stuck her tongue out at his departing back. Sakumo seated himself in a wooden chair behind the door after he closed it, and brought out a bento. Kakashi was happy to forgo his Rubik cube in favor of an offered meal.

Jiraiya rubbed his hands with barely-contained excitement, and then riffled through his pockets. “Excellent, excellent. The other Inuzuka we tried told us they couldn’t smell much of anything beyond the blood, so I’ve pinned my hopes on this working.”

“I didn’t pass, sir.”

Jiraiya froze in the midst of removing a scroll from the inside pocket of his vest. Then he shrugged. “I didn’t pass my first time either. And when I did, I got stuck on the same team as that ass, over there.” He gestured rudely at Orochimaru, who narrowed his golden eyes slightly in irritation. “Don’t worry about it, kid – there’ll be times in your life that you’d wish you remained young and innocent like this forever. Here.” He gestured her close as he laid the scroll down on the surface of his cluttered desk. “I want you to tell me all about the environment you can smell on this. I sealed it up so it wouldn’t get more contaminated with other scents.”

Jiraiya broke the seal. In the middle of a scroll was a bloody, detached sleeve. “In Grass Country, there’s this exclusive set of trackers that have been able to follow us and alert Iwa to our movement before we can strike at any of their posts. So we want to counterattack. Problem is, we have to find this set of people before we can counter them, and that’s where we need your nose. If we can narrow the location down to this group’s likeliest station or hideaway, then Orochimaru and his team here can wipe them out, and then be able to advance our forces further north of the border.”

She stepped close, her nose wrinkling. “It stinks.”

“Trust me, kid. Soap and loofas are luxuries in warzones.”

Tsume froze in mid-reach. “Can I touch it?”

He waved. “Do whatever you think needs to be done. If this doesn’t work, I have to toss it anyway.”

Tsume pinched the cloth, stiff and sticky, gingerly between two fingers and lifted it close. Then she rolled it a few times with several sniffs. “It’s over by Waterfall – not in Waterfall, but close,” she said. “Tobacco fields?” She looked at him for affirmation. Jiraiya shrugged somewhat carelessly, but remained silent. She sniffed a few more times. “Well, removing the smell of the Yamanaka female’s blood from the equation and other Konoha nin, it smells like this guy’s from Iwa. And he regularly hangs with three other people, another from Iwa and two from Kusa. The two from Iwa are male, Kusa’s female. They’re all older than him, and one’s a vegetarian of some sort. They’re mainly in a damp cave, and the soil is going to be really rocky – there’s not a lot of clay or mud, so it’s going to be close to a river, and not near any swamps. They’re really close to a pine forest – probably surrounded by one. And there should be a large clover field not very far away – I don’t know the distance, I’m really bad about that sort of stuff. He also has sex with boys.”

Orochimaru stepped out of the shadows. He leaned forward with a hungry look in his eyes. His heart felt just as hungry to Sakumo – empty, gray, a void that couldn’t be filled. “Are you _sure_? There’s a small village that has been reporting abductions of young boys.”

“Oh, you can tell, all right. Or I can. Young ones that haven’t hit puberty yet. There’s a general shift of pheromones when second, uh, secondary sex traits emerge, I think is how Grandmother calls it. Wherever their cave is, they have to travel through tobacco and clover fields to get to it, and they don’t use camp fires. Those are all the big smells. Does that help?”

Orochimaru retreated back into the shadows, fingers lightly touching his lips in thought. “A cave where the soil conditions are poor but not far from a river, in the middle of a pine forest that’s close to tobacco and clover fields, within a reasonable distance of that village, which is situated close to Waterfall... That will narrow the search down to a _very_ limited number of places.” His eyes rolled over to her, expression slightly awed. His heart was dark, cold, and carefully shrouded. “Jiraiya wasn’t exaggerating when he said your sense of smell is truly exceptional.”

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Jiraiya resealed the bloody sleeve inside the scroll again, and then sat down on the floor. “You even identified the clan of the woman who bled all over this.” He patted the floor beside him. “Come here – I need to talk to you about the Academy.”

Face flushed with remembered guilt, Tsume carefully knelt in front of Jiraiya. Kuromaru half-climbed into her lap, even though he already weighed better than fifteen kilos. She hugged him close.

“You need – no, scratch that. Let me see your grades, first.”

Tsume reluctantly handed Jiraiya the wrinkled sheet of paper that had been jammed deep into one of her pockets, and he read it out loud. “Lessee, C in taijutsu, with a comment from a teacher talking about how your form is reckless, you don’t follow directions very well, and… you deliberately attempted to maim another student? What was _that_ all about?”

“That’s a lie ‘cause I followed directions very well! It was a one-on-one, no-holds barred taijutsu spar against Uchiha Moto, and I kicked him in the balls when he got me into a headlock. I won the fight fair and square, I did, but they told me the move was illegal and it caused a forfeit.”

“Balls!” Kakashi echoed with a gigantic grin, eager to be part of the conversation. Sakumo brushed stubbornly-clinging rice grains from Kakashi’s chubby cheeks, and momentarily basked in the gentle white glow of a heart that love unconditionally.

“You kicked an Uchiha…” Jiraiya’s knees tightened together as he cleared his throat. Orochimaru chuckled.

“Apparently,” Sakumo said with too much cheer, “the blow ruptured a testicle.”

“It was no-holds barred!” Tsume was indignant. “How can you have an illegal move in a no-holds barred fight, and no one even tell you what those illegal moves are?”

Jiraiya coughed. “Well, seems to me like it would be a reasonable misunderstanding. Now, ninjutsu, C, not bad. You have some difficulty memorizing the hand seals and their correct sequences. Regular curriculum fair to middling – _F in math_?”

“Stupid little numbers.”

Kakashi patted his father’s cheek. “…stupid…”

“Comment here says that you also have no concept of the Shinobi Rules.”

“Who cares about whether you can show emotions or not? I can smell them no matter what your face looks like. Besides, my sister Hidarime-chan said that some rules are meant to be broken, and if I’m going to break them, what’s the point of knowing them?”

Jiraiya nodded his head in sage agreement. “I am totally with you, kid. I, too, believe that rules are mere suggestions, instead of-”

“Men staying out of the women’s side of the hot springs is not a suggestion,” Tsume cut in, her face set. “Like you _didn’t_ , yesterday.”

Jiraiya stuttered for a moment, paused long enough to send a dark look at Orochimaru, who was doing a poor job at hiding an amused smile, and then firmly told Tsume, “I was on a _very important_ information-gathering mission that, by pure and utter coincidence _only_ , put me within the general vicinity.” Jiraiya had a good heart, all warm and golden, that grew larger with every person whose life he touched. It wasn’t an innocent heart by far, but certainly good, steadfast, and genuine.

Tsume had a devious note in her voice. “For _six hours_ , sensei?”

Kakashi shook a finger and clicked his tongue. “Bad.”

“Er – we’re not discussing about me and my missions. We’re talking about _you_. Clever way to distract, though, especially when employing Kakashi over here. Almost had me going. Anyway, your entire score average for the written exam was a C, which should’ve put you in passing, even if you flunked on the math and the Shinobi Rules, and it says that you passed the practical exam. How come you did so well with geography?”

“Because I remember what places smell like. I don’t remember the smell of Shinobi Rules, except in the meta, uh, metaphorical way that they stink. They’re just stupid, is all.”

“…stupid…”

“Look, kid, let me tell you something.” Jiraiya crumpled her results up in a ball and tossed it carelessly over his shoulder. Orochimaru sidestepped the balled up paper before it could bounce off his crossed arms. Then Jiraiya pulled Tsume close and bumped his head against hers, as if revealing a rare secret. Kuromaru wriggled, tail wagging and tongue lolling, until he managed to envelope both Tsume and Jiraiya’s laps just as their hearts overlapped – Jiraiya’s warm and golden, Tsume’s gentle blue and curious. “All those people, those smartass geniuses, the ones who get it right immediately and graduate without a problem? They’re going to turn into shit at their first failure. They’re used to succeeding, see, and they don’t know how to deal when they lose. A battlefield or a mission is not the place where you want your comrade to be falling apart because you have to cover their ass in addition to your own. You and me, now? We’re used to failing. We know what it’s like to pick ourselves back up out of the mud, spit out our loose teeth, and go swinging back into the fight before our opponent realizes that we don’t have the shame to stay down. I’ve seen it, time and time again, out there in the real world.”

Sakumo listened to four hearts, one little blue heart softly singing hope, the other responding with an orchestra of acceptance; one steel-gray and ravenous, the other brand new and white with extraordinary love and adoration for all.

“On the flipside, there’s the endless defeatist, the one whose negativity sucks away all hope and purpose for succeeding. Because they’ve failed for so often and for so long, they simply can’t believe that they can ever do anything right, or ever succeed at anything. And since they’ve never succeeded, no one else should be allowed to, and they’ll drag everyone down with them. It’s those extremes that nearly got me killed. The people who think they can do no wrong, and the people who think they can do no right – they create fallacies that destroy everyone who get sucked in.

“Now, I know your great-grandmother is this black hole of negativity that sucks away all enjoyment in life. She’s one of those naysayers who will never see you getting anything right. You can work your tail off and kill yourself trying to please her, but the sad thing is, _it’ll never be enough_ , no matter how successful you become. Someone like her has such an unbending spine that she’d die before admitting otherwise. Don’t waste your life going in that direction, because she’s not going to live forever, and you still want something to show yourself when she’s dead and gone. I want you to go back to the Academy. We really _need_ someone like you once you graduate.”

She hunched, looking small and vulnerable in the crook of his arm. Guilt and shame were screaming. “Grandmother said she’s not going to pay for it.”

“I will,” Sakumo said. And then he added, “It’s not a free gift, Tsume-chan. I’m rotating to the front of the lines in Wind again, and that’s going to take me away for months at a time over the next year. I need someone I trust to watch over Kakashi. I was hoping to talk you into staying at my home and babysitting, and in return I’ll cover your expenses with the Academy.”

“You don’t have to pay me to watch Kakashi, Sakumo-senpai!”

“Your great-grandmother is less likely to refuse if she knows the Academy payment is made in exchange of honest labor.” Sakumo knew it wasn’t going to be that easy though, which was why he had every intention of making the arrangements directly with the Hokage and Tsume’s sire without any mention to the Clan Head. Inuzuka Shinzou was very displeased with Tsume’s ongoing open relationship with her nephew and Sakumo, even unhappier knowing that Hidarime saw the Hatakes on the sly whenever she was in Konoha, and most likely only reluctantly allowed both to continue because she spent too much time in Rain to intervene.

“Great thinking,” Jiraiya said. Then he laughed and rubbed his knuckles against Tsume’s scalp, pinning her to prevent her escape. Guilt and shame were finally silenced, and her little blue heart was fluttering around like an inquisitive hummingbird. “See, kid, you’ll graduate next year no problem, and then I’m going to put that magnificent nose of yours to work!”

“Do me a favor, Tsume-chan.” Orochimaru’s voice was soft. “Go fetch Yamanaka Yuu and bring him back – he should be on the second level.”

Her face split into a wide grin; the look Jiraiya gave Orochimaru as he dropped his hands away was unnoticed by Tsume, but Sakumo filed it away in his brain. Kuromaru jumped off her lap barking, and she stood upright, fist-pumping the air. “Yessir, Orochimaru-sama!” There were shouts of dismay and surprise as she and Kuromaru dashed out of the room and down the hallway.

Sakumo gently placed the protesting Kakashi on the floor, and then watched in amusement as the not-quite-a-year-old baby eagerly followed after his aunt with only a little wobble in his awkward run, calling out, “Me too, me too!”

“They’re such gutsy little things, our shinobi,” Jiraiya said with a sad smile. Sakumo felt the sadness echo in his own heart – little things they may be, but that would change in just a few short years, when their bright innocence and faith would be transformed into cynical stubbornness. He wished their hearts would forever remain pure.

“That was a good speech,” Sakumo told Jiraiya as they heard more shouts of dismay at the sight of Kakashi. “Corny, but very heartfelt.”

“Wasn’t it though?” Jiraiya perked up. “I ought to write a book just to use that speech again.”

The door was kicked open even though it was slightly ajar already, and Yamanaka Yuu stormed in with Kakashi tucked under one arm and Tsume tucked under the other. Kuromaru followed after, growling at Yuu’s heels. Both children kicked and squirmed.

“I found him!” Tsume yelled triumphantly, waving her hand like she was in class.

Kakashi giggled and flapped his arms and legs. “Me too! Me too!”

“Good job, kids.”

After Sakumo and the two small gutsy ninja-in-training departed, Jiraiya turned to Yuu with a serious expression. “My deepest condolences for the loss of your niece, Rei.”

Yuu’s face was tight, and he looked at the wall above Jiraiya’s head, opposite of Orochimaru. His light blue eyes were carefully blank. “She died honorably.”

Orochimaru stepped forward and perched on the edge of the desk. He folded his arms and considered Yuu with a cool expression. “Indeed, she did. It wasn’t a total loss when she was killed with that sleeve in her hand, even if it wasn’t her original goal.”

When Yuu said nothing, Jiraiya sighed and ran his hands through his shaggy white hair. “The problem is that she asked questions. _All_ of the kunoichi we’ve sent and lost on this mission asked questions and snooped around. I had thought that with the clan’s techniques, she could be subtle, but even that wasn’t enough.”

“She will be the last we send,” Orochimaru added with a slow shake of his head. “For the interim – or as long as we can hold out.” Yuu’s gaze finally turned on Orochimaru. “But now there is another possibility we can use, even if it’s not for another few years. Still, in the next year, do whatever it takes – use your mind techniques if you have to and implant the memories yourself – to make Inuzuka Tsume memorize the Shinobi Rules and ANBU’s sign communication.”

As Yuu’s expression became horrified, Jiraiya was quick to say, “We’re not planning anything for the next few years.” But the look he gave Orochimaru was one of nervous doubt.

oOoOoOo

In retrospect, the Academy teachers deeply regretted their mistake in failing Inuzuka Tsume when she wound up in the same year as Uzumaki Kushina and Mitarashi Kokoro. Singularly, any one of the girls was an energetic handful eagerly looking for problems to get into. Tsume had a nose that was better at sniffing her into trouble than out, coupled with a complete and utter lack of fear. Kushina had a temper to match her red hair, ambitions bigger than Tsume’s harebrained schemes, and the energy and chakra to back up said harebrained schemes. Kokoro, like her four older brothers, was bloodthirsty, cunning, and basked delightfully in the pain and suffering of others, the opportunities of such provided through the combined efforts of Kushina and Tsume.

They also genuinely liked each other, so it was more than just a show of lethal force against a class that seemed equally united against the three. It was the blooming of a friendship usually experienced just once in a lifetime. The newness in exploring trust and teaming up together. The improvement of Tsume’s battered self-esteem because two intelligent girls thought _she_ was just as smart as they were.

The start of many new, somewhat unfortunate, records.

To date, they were the only three students whom the Hokage ever had to place a lifetime ban against attending any of the kunoichi-only classes. Kushina had hotly demanded to know about the purpose flower arrangements, “Because I’d sooner jab out my targets’ eyes than seduce them, believe it!” Then Kokoro slyly pointed out that the rose stems _could_ be used to jab out eyes given enough force and velocity – perhaps even used to skewer _other_ body parts. Tsume, sulky and bored with repeating the class, then felt such a hypothesis should be tested, and lo – the arsenal was readily available at _that very moment!_

The Unholy Trio were happy to discover that flowers could indeed qualify as very effective weapons if one applied enough force and chakra, so the class wasn’t a complete washout, even when they wound up washing blackboards until midnight (Kakashi slept curled up against Kuromaru beneath the teacher’s desk, waiting for his aunt to finish). The parents, on the other hand, were not pleased with having to fetch their daughters from the hospital instead of the Academy. Teachers threatened the Hokage early retirement/abrupt sabbatical if something wasn’t done.

oOoOoOo

“Good for them,” Danzo said in approval when Sakumo told him and other Konoha ninja forces on break, all crammed into Sakumo’s tent to read the Ongoing Adventures of the Unholy Trio And Their Cute Mascots – also known as Tsume and Kushina’s frequent letters to the battlefront. Everyone present was battered, bloody, and all desperately looking for a little bit of cheer. They all readily agreed that Tsume and Kushina were excellent sources of entertainment and local gossip. “I’ve always thought that the kunoichi-only ikebana classes were exercises in uselessness.” Danzo was the only one with elbow room in the tent – mainly because he had a very large invisible bubble of personal space that everyone but Sakumo deeply respected.

Sakumo reread the sloppy, barely-eligible writing as the surrounding forces chuckled. “One should never overlook the resourcefulness of a woman scorned. I don’t think _I_ would’ve considered using floral arrangements as deadly weapons.”

oOoOoOo

But as the pendulum swings to one side, so it must swing to the other. No longer allowed to attend the kunoichi-only classes, the three girls had to make do with the boys’ outdoor taijutsu class as the kunoichi-only classes took place indoors. Against the boys, the girls teamed up with each other once again. The consequences of this led to _another_ lifetime ban, against using any kicks or blows to the genitals. Tsume pointed out that nowhere in the _written_ rules did it _actually_ say that such moves were illegal, no matter what had been verbalized to her the year before (Kokoro actually double-checked the Academy Rules and Regulations of Classroom Conduct). “A kunoichi,” Tsume said primly to the Hokage, “must use all her wits and advantages.”

“Well, since it needs to be written, you are all going to witness history taking place.” The Hokage wrote the rule into the official Academy guidelines and signed it, before the entire class. “Gender-neutral,” he added, “so the girls don’t get kicked down there either.” He was seated at the teacher’s desk with his knees tightly pressed together where no one could see. “Really though, it’s the principle of the manner. We can’t have our students maiming each other before they even have the chance to graduate. There’s a reason why we give you dull weapons to run around with.” Not to mention that the students were needed to breed a new generation of shinobi if they ever managed to survive to adulthood.

“Then tell them to stop punching me in the boobs!” Tsume yelled, no longer prim. And she socked Namikaze Minato in the jaw when he turned around in his seat to face her and accurately pointed out that she had no boobs in which to be punched. 

However, the Hokage refused to condone “Punching girls in the mammary glands is illegal” per Kokoro’s suggestion, prompting Kushina to exclaim that _this_ was sexism and all clearly designed to give shinobi a step up over kunoichi. “Hardly surprising, given that you all wanted to arm us with _flowers_ , instead of kunai like the boys! When _I_ become Hokage, I’m eliminating that course from the Academy’s education, believe it.”

The Hokage considered alternatives for the Unholy Trio as he retreated to the relative safety of his office, deciding that the teachers could (mostly) effectively handle the riot the girls were trying to incite, bless their dark little hearts. They would make fine – albeit ruthless – lawyers if their careers as kunoichi didn’t pan out.

oOoOoOo

Tsume knew and understood that Kakashi was her responsibility, even when she was in school. Which meant that she had to make daytime arrangements for Kakashi when she couldn’t take care of him, and so she settled for asking her great-aunt, Natsumi (who was actually several greats, as she was Grandmother Shinzou’s only surviving sister). Even though Aunt Natsumi’s sense of smell was long gone from a disfiguring attack, her brain injured, and her mind broken in the grief of losing her twin daughters and ninken in the same attack, her eyes were still sharp.

“And’s who’s _this_?” Aunt Natsumi asked with a dangerous glare. Her face, like Tsume’s, was bare of any clan markings. Unlike Tsume, this was a deliberate choice.

“ _This_ is Kakashi-chan,” Tsume said with a guileless smile. Then she slapped Kakashi’s hand as he tugged uncomfortably at the hem of Cousin Yumi’s frilly purple dress that she had stuffed him into. “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind looking after her while I’m in class at the Academy.” Most of the Inuzuka clan was gone, working as advanced trackers and scouts for the war in four different nations. Aunt Natsumi also generally kept to herself, in her own little house, away from most of the main living district in the compound as she obsessed over her research on summons. “I promised her father, since she doesn’t have a mother, and he’s serving at the front.” Tsume pinched Kakashi’s hand as he reached up and gave the white ribbons in his crooked ponytails an irritated yank.

Kakashi gave Tsume a dirty look. Aunt Natsumi studied him for a moment, and then said, “Well, I could use someone to fetch and carry for me. Bit short though, so leave the other pup so he can pick up the slack.”

Tsume didn’t want to leave Kuromaru, but he ensured her that their frequent parting would turn out alright, because he already knew what she was reviewing, and besides, he didn’t like math either. _I don’t see why both of us have to be miserable, when only one needs to._

“Make sure that Kakashi stays dressed,” she whispered in his ear, just outside of Aunt Natsumi’s hearing. “The gig’s up if she catches him naked.” Good thing she had worked really hard making sure Kakashi was potty-trained over the summer.

oOoOoOo

Danzo picked up Sakumo’s letter from where it had fluttered to the sandy ground from lax hands. Sakumo’s eyes were wide and his mouth was slack. Then he read the letter out loud to the other shinobi who were tightly bunched shoulder to elbow. Danzo shook his head and chuckled along with the surrounding laughter. “I do believe Tsume is raising your son to be a sexual deviant. This _is_ how deviants start out, yes?”

Sakumo seemed to awake from his shock, and he snatched the letter away from Danzo. “I’m sure _you_ would know the answer to that. She’s… it’s just… I’m sure it will work out.” He looked like he wanted to mope in a dark corner somewhere.

“If it makes you feel better, Sakumo-san, I’m sure that Kakashi-chan makes an adorable little girl. Do you suppose Tsume could get us pictures?”

oOoOoOo

When the Unholy Trio weren’t actively making their teachers strongly reconsider the benefits of accepting missions that took them to the war front, or doing errands at the Police Station to pay off fines for disturbing the peace or for being general menaces to society, they were busy with their beloved little mascots. Kuromaru and Kakashi often waited for them at the entrance of the Academy when classes were let out – and then often would enter the Academy upon realizing that the girls must have received detention because they hadn’t exited with the rest of the students. Kuromaru and Kakashi didn’t have to be with the girls to garner peripheral attention – they did that just fine without any assistance.

oOoOoOo

“Tree walking!” one of the teachers exclaimed with energetic gestures after storming into Hiruzen’s office. This particular teacher was an Uchiha, but Hiruzen couldn’t remember the man’s name. After a few generations, most of the Uchihas started looking alike. Hiruzen briefly considered the consequences of encouraging the Uchihas to breed outside the clan, just to expand their repertoire of hair color, and then decided not to mention anything – it would probably incite a riot or a coup. That, and Kagami would probably take this as a suggestion to introduce his fellow clansmen to unconventional shades of hair dyes. “The Hatake brat is barely walking _and_ he can tree-walk better than most of my students!”

Hiruzen stared at the teacher over the tall stacks of papers that hid most of his desk from view. Only the top of his hat and dark eyes were visible. “I wasn’t aware that many of the Academy students _could_.”

“ _Exactly_ my point, Hokage-sama.” When nothing more was added, Hiruzen suspected that the point was stuck to the Uchiha’s head.

“And you’re just now noticing this? Inuzuka Tsume has been practicing tree-walking ever since Kakashi was born. He probably learned how to tree-walk at the same time he learned how to walk in general – holding her hand the entire time, no doubt.”

The Uchiha glared at Hiruzen with narrowed eyes. “Did you know that the Inuzuka _dog_ babysits the White Fang’s son? That Hatake Kakashi is without adult supervision all day long while the Inuzuka brat is getting into trouble?”

That was a little harsh, Hiruzen thought. Granted, Inuzuka Natsumi was unconventional and seemed to be operating under the strange delusion that Kakashi was a little girl (he had yet to figure out why else Kakashi would always be wearing dresses around her) but she still qualified as adult supervision in the strictest sense of the term. After all, he had entrusted Natsumi to help Tsunade-chan train, and it turned out very well!

Hmm. Minus the whole encouragement and reinforcement of Tsunade’s violent aggression. Then again, if Hiruzen had wanted someone who would’ve helped Tsunade develop more ladylike, traditional kunoichi skills, he _wouldn’t_ have gone to any of the Inuzuka women.

He considered that it was a shame how his best teachers were needed at the warfronts and the skeletal crew left to run the Academy were… _these_ (not that he’d say anything out loud – it really was fortunate that the Uchiha Police Force was kindly volunteering to fill in needed gaps in the Academy’s faculty). But why must the young and the innocent suffer during wars?

On the other hand, Hiruzen considered, Ninja Academy teachers had to be a special breed to give young, reckless adolescents slightly-dull weapons and then supervise the play of said adolescents. It was probably why his teachers were some of the more formable chuunin at the front lines. It also explained why so many were reluctant to return to Konoha.

“My dear boy,” Hiruzen said as he grabbed a stack of papers and carefully pulled it close in front of him as a barricade against further interruption, “there are worse things out there in the world than being raised by a pack of wild dogs.” Besides, the Unholy Trio weren’t exactly a _pack_ , per se. And Hatake Sakumo _had_ to have known what he was getting into when he asked Tsume to care for his son.

oOoOoOo

“I told you so,” Sakumo said casually as he patched up his commander’s mangled eye socket. Besides the vultures, Sakumo and Danzo were the only living creatures within several kilometers. He had earlier dragged the four bodies of Suna puppeteers into the same sand dune’s shade that Danzo was slumped in, careful to cover the bodies with their cloaks out of respect for the dead. Puppet parts were left in the sun, littering the sand hither and yon. “ANBU masks do shit to peripheral vision. That’s why I never wear mine. You would’ve ducked that shrapnel in time if you saw it coming.”

Danzo’s glare was no less fierce with just one eye – perhaps more so, because his hair was matted and his face covered with a paste of dried blood and sand. The glare from the gray granite barrier surrounding his heart was also brutal. “And yet it’s Hatake Sakumo who’s in the Bingo Books for what he’s done to Suna’s puppeteers, _not_ Shimura Danzo. The masks protect our identities.”

Sakumo dribbled some water from his canteen on a somewhat clean handkerchief and bent to vigorously scrub Danzo’s chin. “I’d rather have two eyes than no identity. Seems kinda superfluous to me, anyway.”

Danzo snatched the handkerchief away from Sakumo. “Gimme that. You have the bedside manner of a rock and the gentle touch of a scorpion.”

Sakumo flopped down beside Danzo’s blind side and took a long pull of warm, stale water from his canteen. “See, my identity as ANBU is safe because no one knows I’m ANBU if I never wear a mask.” He handed the canteen to Danzo; he expected Danzo to stiffen because Sakumo was out of his line of vision _and_ had the audacity to barge into his invisible bubble of personal space, but the man actually seemed to relax. It warmed Sakumo to know that Danzo felt safer with Sakumo covering his blind side. Slowly but surely, he was working his way through the booby-trapped maze that Danzo had erected around the black lump that qualified as his heart.

They sat quietly for a moment as Danzo slowly sipped Sakumo’s water, each surveying the carnage before them. “You know,” Sakumo began, crossing his ankles and resting against the soft sand, “while I don’t necessarily like them aimed at me, the puppets really _are_ brilliant, with all those hidden traps, sharp doodads, and dangerous thingamabobs attached. They’re like the world’s deadliest puzzles.”

Danzo barely paused with his sipping. “Don’t forget the occasional poison coating those sharp doodads and dangerous thingamabobs that only Tsunade-hime can figure out the antidotes for. They are an admirable force, indeed.”

“Right.” Sakumo pointed. “Do you think that Chiyo-san would mind if I ran off with some of the more intact puppets over there? Because Kakashi really likes puzzles.”

Danzo choked on the water. Sakumo pounded his back until Danzo’s coughing ceased. “You – you want to give your _not-quite_ _two year old son_ the ‘world’s deadliest puzzle’? Are you out of your mind, Hatake?”

Sakumo shrugged. He liked Chiyo’s heart, even if she wouldn’t even cross a street to piss on him if he were on fire. “Why not? It would make good practice for Kakashi. Okay, so I can always wait until he’s older – like five, maybe. What do you think?”

“I think that Inuzuka Tsume has more sense than Kakashi’s father, and she’s _eleven_. And that doesn’t include the fact that she’d probably enjoy helping Kakashi take the puppets apart. Her youth is an excuse in this case – _you_ have no excuse. Between you both as parental figures, it’ll be a miracle that Kakashi doesn’t become an emotionally-stunted misbehaving sexual deviant with antisocial tendencies.”

Sakumo rubbed his chin in thought. “You think? But it seems to me that all the great shinobi are emotionally-stunted misbehaving sexual deviants with antisocial tendencies – or a combination thereof. Like Jiraiya.”

“Hmmm.”

“Orochimaru.”

Danzo took another sip. “Yes.”

“You.”

Danzo gave Sakumo a shifted side-glare. “You do realize that I could kill you and always report that it was the puppeteers who did it.”

“You’re just proving my point, Captain.”

Danzo added some more water to his handkerchief and resumed cleaning his face. “Giving the world’s deadliest puzzles to two year old sons is misbehaving at best, and arguably an indication of being emotionally stunted.”

Sakumo laughed and slapped Danzo on the shoulder, ignoring the dirty look Danzo gave him for the physical contact. There was the tiniest crack in the granite barrier, and contentment was slipping through. “Ahhhh. That’s so sweet of you to think of me as a great shinobi. The last time you called me anything, it was a… how did you put it?”

“A fumbling buffoon with too much sand between his ears.”

“Right. Well, I feel like our friendship and mutual respect has really grown since then, you know?”

“That was just this morning.”

“But sometimes it only takes _one_ great adversity to change one’s vision, yes? Although it’s probably too literal in your case, Captain.”

“When you asked if Chiyo would mind if you absconded with some of her puppets – was that a rhetorical question?” Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose at Sakumo’s tentative grin. “Please don’t tell me you weren’t thinking of writing an actual request. Are you _trying_ to earn yourself an automatic kill-on-sight reaction from that woman? Do you have any idea how that’s going to come back and haunt you for years to come?”

“I thought killing Chiyo-san’s children already earned me her undying hatred. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You know what? On second thought, please, feel free to collect some souvenirs for your son.” Danzo irritably waved his hand at the carnage. “Be proud of any pathological tendencies you might be nurturing in the boy. I know I would if I had to raise or train children.”

“You do worry me sometimes, Danzo.” Danzo had a heart that cringed in receiving pain, and yet delighted in torturing others. It was as if he deliberately drove people away so he wouldn’t suffer from being too close to them.

“Put a sock in it, Sakumo.”

“I’m just sayin’. You’re not exactly parenting material.”

oOoOoOo

“You should go bother someone else,” Uchiha Fugaku told Tsume dismissively. He was taller and broader than she was, secure in his age of eighteen years and thusly more superior than the eleven-year-old Tsume. “If you keep following me through the market, I’ll have you arrested for stalking and harassment.” His newly-acquired police badge gleamed in the bright sunshine.

“ _You_ bumped into _us_ ,” Tsume replied, jabbing a thumb at herself. On her left, Kakashi was astride Kuromaru. Both of them still looked a little dazed after Fugaku had accidentally knocked them over. Kushina and Kokoro looked on in mild interest. Tsume crossed her arms stubbornly in front of herself. “So until you apologize, we’re going to keep following you. Right girls?”

Kushina grinned as she nodded her head in agreement. “Believe it!”

Kokoro’s expression was sly. “Why exactly did you need the fungal foot cream again, senpai?” she asked Fugaku with a sticky-sweet voice.

Fugaku made an impatient noise and then riffled through his bag. “Figures that I’d be dogged by an Inuzuka today. Here. Fetch!” He procured a red rubber ball and tossed it wide over the market crowd.

Eyes wide with sudden interest, Tsume and Kuromaru mowed through Kokoro and Kushina as Tsume yelled, “Oh! Oh! I’ve got it!”

Fugaku, cackling about “Simpleton Tsume,” flickered away before she could wrestle the ball away from a playfully growling Kuromaru.

Kokoro covered her face in exasperation as Kushina made a face. “Do you ever wonder, if her memory wasn’t better, she’d actually remember falling for that same trick twice in the last month?” Kokoro asked. Kushina replied with a wordless shrug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoy writing interactions between Sakumo and Danzo. They do a pretty good job, balancing each other. And for whatever reason, I am also quite fond of Jiraiya.


	7. Alpha years - Chapter Four

Time passed. The Second Shinobi War was all but won in the countries of Wind and Rain, but stalled against the combined might of Earth and Lightning. Forces were unable to obtain the badly-needed information they required for full assault, although they managed to hold steady. Konoha and Iwa stabbed each other, bleeding drop by bitter drop. But even death by a thousand paper cuts is no less fatal than decapitation. It was just a matter of time to see who would be the first in inflicting the thousandth paper cut.

oOoOoOo

At night, when the other troublemakers had their fill for a moment and were recovering their energy for the next day of ruckus, and Kakashi was tucked away in bed, Tsume studied with Yamanaka Yuu. The man had decided to use her sense of smell to increase her perception and memory retention. Each night, he filled Sakumo’s spare bedroom with a new strong scent, and made Tsume repeat the name of the scent in conjunction with the Shinobi Rule, in addition to critically thinking through different scenarios where the rule would be appropriate. “Onions. Rule Sixteen. A shinobi must always expect and prepare for the worst.” Then she glared at him through watery eyes. “I hate onions. I can’t smell anything else _but_ onions now.”

“I’m sure the rule is feeling the same love,” Yuu said with a yawn. Despite Tsume’s memory difficulty, she had a fairly good grasp of complex ideas and the uncanny ability to reduce said complex ideas into straightforward statements. And once she had grasped the straightforward statement, she stopped there, almost as if her brain decided any more effort would be too troublesome - he never thought that he would be stuck working with someone who was the worst combination of two diametrically opposing clans. “You don’t give much thought to the worst expectations, anyway. Or much thought in general. And I say this as a professional mind-reader.”

Tsume fumed and rubbed at her watery, irritated eyes and plotted about how she was going to tar and feather the man, but use molasses instead of tar because she liked the scent of molasses much more. But she would have to practice first with the process, because Yuu, no matter how pretty his long, sleek blond hair was and how he fussed over it, was not a man to be underestimated.

Getting Tsume to memorize the complex and extended handsigns of ANBU was ultimately impossible. It took six months of Yuu’s careful and meticulous tutoring to have her successfully memorize the fifty Shinobi Rules and some of the more common mathematical formulae and algorithms that the Academy used. Even if her self-esteem hadn’t been so battered by the years of verbal abuse her great-grandmother put her through, Tsume still would’ve struggled with rote memorization.

So, two months before the next Academy graduation, Tsume agreed to let Yuu enter her mind and implant the entire ANBU handsign dictionary. “Is this going to hurt?” she asked, concerned, as she knelt in front of him. They were in Sakumo’s study after she made sure that Kakashi had been fed, bathed, and tucked into bed. Tsume didn’t question why Yuu told her it was necessary to memorize the dictionary, bless her blissful little heart.

“You’ll feel a pressure,” Yuu replied, fingers slowly forming the clan’s mind-transfer technique seal.

“No, my brain. I don’t have much left of it so – erk.” She slumped over backwards as Yuu fell into a world of pain.

oOoOoOo

“You wanted to talk to me?” Inuzuka Shinzou’s face was lined and her wild silver hair was sloppily tied into a bun on top of her head. Everything about her was faded, except for the clan markings on her cheeks that were a bright crimson reserved only for alphas. She stood at the entrance of his pit, tired but not worn. She was the oldest ninja Orochimaru knew – her files didn’t give an exact age, likely because she had been an adult when the First invited the Inuzuka clan to join Konoha, and she never admitted to anything. He was sure she had to be _at least_ ninety years old, but was still quite able to outrun and outfight most shinobi fifty years her junior. Orochimaru waved her to the table where he had various maps spread open, overlapping each other. She kept her gaze turned on him as she knelt at the table. Her four ninken – massive sleek hounds that easily rivaled wild wolves in size, speed, and deadliness – remained standing at her back, watching him with the same wariness. Their eyes gleamed in the lantern light. It was early morning, but the underground quarters never saw daylight.

“You’re a blunt woman,” Orochimaru said as he braced his chin upon a raised fist and studied her.

“I know. So skip the bullshit and get to the point.”

Orochimaru was absolutely certain that he _didn’t like_ blunt women. “Your great-granddaughter will be graduating from the Academy in two months.”

Shinzou snorted with disdain. “I doubt it.”

“And even if she wasn’t, I would still have a mission for her, but require a guardian’s permission.”

She frowned and tapped her claws against the surface of his desk. How did all the Inuzuka women manage to have claws instead of fingernails? Orochimaru concluded that it had to be a family technique, seeing as how the unclaimed Inuzuka sons didn’t have the claws. “That means the mission is at least A rank.”

He had to be careful how he approached this. The Inuzuka clan was fiercely protective of its young, and even though Shinzou didn’t appear to have much by way of any fondness for _this_ particular young girl, there was a likelihood that culture and tradition would override that lack of fondness. “Indeed. It has a very high potential of being a suicidal mission-”

“Permission granted.” Orochimaru watched Shinzou silently, and she smiled ruefully before shrugging. “Tsume is worthless, even as a meat shield. So if she dies on this mission, it’s no loss to the clan. If she survives – well, then she’s proven that she’s a capable girl, and that there’s still some distant hope for her yet.”

Orochimaru dropped the fist and straightened. “Her sense of smell is extraordinary. Far greater than anyone else in the clan.” The loss of such would be… a shame. Orochimaru valued the rare and the priceless, although not as much as he valued the fruition of his ambitions.

“It is indeed. And it nearly got her killed before – what’s to stop it from succeeding a second time? Tell me, do you know what it’s like to care for a drooling, incontinent vegetable? Or a vegetable whose brain is so turned into mush that she can’t even drool? I know I’m called heartless, and for good reason, too... I brought Konoha to her knees when my granddaughter died in childbirth and Tsume’s sire refused to give me the baby. I loved and raised Tsume as my own. But I should’ve recognized it was just a sign of how she was destined for great failure.

“She died face-down in a pool of her own blood, there in the Nara forest. Oh, Tsume looked just ghastly, the way the blood congealed around her eyes, her nose, her ears. She had once been a cautious, quiet child, thoughtful and extremely intelligent, just like her sire, but after she died – _that thing_ that returned is not _my_ great-granddaughter. I had such high hopes – she had so much of me, in her, and all that spilled out on the ground, lost forever.”

Orochimaru watched as shadows and light drifted across Shinzou’s aged face, and remained silent. In his experience, people spoke to fill silences, and usually said what could not be asked. Shinzou closed her eyes, tilted her head, and continued. “The world is cruel to able-bodied ninja, and ruthless with the crippled. I once thought that I was doing a kindness, preparing Tsume for what life would be like when I wasn’t around.” She smiled at him, her teeth gleaming in the dark. “The truth is, she’s weak prey, and I am really nothing more than a savage predator at heart. That was who I was before Konoha was born, and that’s how I will die.”

“Then, as a savage predator, you have no qualms about your twelve-year-old great-granddaughter being sold into child prostitution.”

The smile widened – the teeth looked particularly sharp. The four ninken growled behind her. “I’ll sell her for you myself.”

oOoOoOo

Tsume drifted in a field of red where the colors seemed inverted. It was a good thing she liked red things (especially hair, so rich and vibrant in color), otherwise it would be horrid. Every time she turned her head to look at the torn landscape, her vision swam. She couldn’t smell anything, couldn’t find her legs beneath her, and couldn’t feel any emotions. She heard a voice… _Damn Uchiha, if I wasn’t the best – fuck, child! Stop bleeding like this!_

It seemed familiar. As if she had been here in a dream once before. Black triangles appeared over her head, and a voice, as cold and as dry as a graveyard, whispered, _“Do you know what they say about curiosity and cats, child?”_

She heard the echo of her own voice, so distant and very young. _“No, Uchiha-ojisan. I’m Inuzuka – we don’t have cats.”_

_“Doesn’t matter. You’ll learn that dogs die just as easily as cats.”_

And she thought: I’ve seen before, but I can’t remember where.

oOoOoOo

Tsume awoke to Yuu cleaning her face and muttering darkly beneath his breath. The rag was red. “What happened?” she asked, trying to focus despite the pounding agony in her head.

Yuu laughed; it sounded like a shrill scream that echoed around in her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen the likes of this before, and I don’t know any of _them_ who currently have this particular level of cruelty – to savage a child’s mind so completely that it’s nearly destroyed, and then not finish the job.” He touched her forehead. “I couldn’t sort out of the damage, but I’ve got the dictionary loaded in your mind, and I even managed to tweak your memory a little bit – I kind of pulled a little more chakra into the areas for your memory, to increase its capabilities.” His expression softened at her confusion. “It’s like your nose, how you increase the chakra there to increase your sense of smell. It’s not much given the original damage, but it will help with the math and short-term memory.”

“You mean I could’ve increased chakra in my brain and remembered things sooner? How come no one ever told me this before?”

Yuu sighed as he rinsed and rung out his rag over a dish of lukewarm water. He resumed cleaning the blood from her ears. “Because the brain isn’t something anyone can go poking around in. It’s so complex and so vast and still quite unknown. Look, the brain runs on chemicals that balance delicately, like an upright teeter-totter. If you pull chemicals from one part of the brain to increase stimulation in another, then the teeter-totter dips, and the part of the brain that you took the chemicals from doesn’t works as well.”

“So, no fiddling with my brain, that’s what got me in this mess in the first place when I was six?” Tsume touched her scalp; it felt very tender. “Grandmother said I overloaded it in the first place by smelling too much.”

Yuu’s expression was shrouded as he helped her sit upright. “Your brain wasn’t overwhelmed – it was shredded from the inside-out, although I don’t doubt you sniffed out the cause in the first place. Here, drink this.” She dutifully sipped the water he gave her, feeling like someone had activated an exploding tag attached to the top of her head.

“…let’s not do this again,” she whispered after she drank her fill.

“I concur.”

oOoOoOo

This had to be one of the most fulfilling duties to come with the hat, Sarutobi Hiruzen reflected as three of the Academy teachers sat with him at his desk, the student files spread out before them. The paperwork was enough to kill a normal man, but the satisfaction of reviewing the future of his village – the young, bright souls that would carry on the legacy of all those who came before them – was something he looked forward to year after year (although the anticipation was morbidly bittersweet this year, knowing that he’d be sending them off still as children into an active war).

Really, he ought to be out in the warfront, leading like the First and Second had, not trapped behind the desk. But the Council didn’t want him to leave Konoha – someone had to protect the beloved village, especially when enemy forces snuck so close half a year previously that dear Senju Nawaki was killed in a trap barely five kilometers outside of the great wooden walls. ( _“Our shinobi still need a home to come back to when they’re on leave and when the war ends, and you’re the only one who can protect said home.”_ Pretty words that didn’t ease the burden on his heart and shoulders as he watched the backs of his shinobi receding in the distance, instead of standing at their forefront.)

Despite that, however, even the arguments with the Academy teachers were fun, if not a bit heated.

“Gentlemen,” Hiruzen said, knowing there was a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lip, “I fail to see what could be wrong with this team.”

Genko glared at him. “It’s an all-female team. That’s just not done, Hokage-sama. Girls become simpering _faucets_ after their hormones kick in, if not during Academy, and all they think about are boys and clothes and boys, and did I mention boys? That’s why we try pairing two boys with one girl, to make sure that the boys can be an encouraging example of how an developing ninja learns to excel and improve themselves.”

Hiruzen stared – _what had I been smoking when I scraped you off the bottom of the barrel as an Academy instructor_? He carefully scooted his chair away from Genko. “What flowers does your wife like?”

“I…I don’t understand, Hokage-sama.”

“It’s a very simple question. What flowers does your wife like?”

“Roses, sir.”

Hiruzen jabbed his thumb at the window. “I’ll be sure to send a bouquet of them to your wife, along with my condolences of the loss of her husband, after _you_ go tell Inuzuka Tsume, Uzumaki Kushina, and Mitarashi Kokoro that they are simpering faucets with hormonal problems, and far too much interest in boys than in developing their skills as kunoichi.”

“ _That_ ,” said Toushiro, “is not the problem, as far as I can see. Any one of these girls is more of a tomboy than most of the boys in the Academy. The problem is, _this_ team is not well-balanced.”

Ah, yes, the dreaded bane of every decision. _Balance_. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Hiruzen said as he picked up the paper that listed their grades and looked it over again. “They already know their weaknesses and strengths; they know how to complement each other’s strengths and to steady each other’s weakness. How much more of a balance does one need?”

Toushiro leaned back into his chair and groaned. “Just what exactly are you trying to achieve with this, Hokage-sama? They don’t have the makings for a tracking squad, since Inuzuka is the only one with that capability; they can’t do melee, since Mitarashi doesn’t have the strength or the stamina; they certainly _can’t_ do infiltration, because Uzumaki and Inuzuka don’t have the subtlety – or the silence – for it. Besides, I feel that it’s not fair to drive Hatake Sakumo into an early grave with such a team, even if he did directly request the Inuzuka brat.”

Hiruzen personally felt that if Hatake could survive knowing his son was the responsibility of a then-eleven year old girl with memory issues while he was off fighting a war, it shouldn’t be a problem handling these three girls.

He reconsidered after remembering the darling little dresses and cute ribbons that Kakashi still wore... Hatake shouldn’t have _too_ much of a problem. Instead, he said, “Just because a team doesn’t appear to have an immediate specialty doesn’t mean it wouldn’t manifest as their talents emerge and develop. While I agree that Inuzuka would fare well being switched to the team with the Aburame and Hyuuga to create the ultimate tracking team, I feel that it’s not what we need right now. Neither of you are seeing what a stabilizing force Mitarashi is to Inuzuka and Uzumaki, with her tactical mind.”

He bit back a smile at the disbelieving looks they gave him. “Stabilizing? We’re talking about the same Mitarashi, yes?” Genko asked. “The smart one of the bunch who’s just as sadistic as her brothers? The same brothers who are top in their field of torture and interrogation? If you’re trying to make this into a team of ruthless bloodthirsty killers, then it’s perfect, sir. Just perfect. They’re too loud to be a good assassination team, but they have all the makings of a berserker squad. Maybe even a first-rate search-and-rescue team, if they’re willing to all become medics. But in which case, Hatake Sakumo shouldn’t be their sensei, since medical isn’t his forte.”

“Mitarashi does like to push the envelope, yes, but ultimately she has a healthy idea of her own limits, especially as a child,” Hiruzen explained as patiently as he could. Even teachers sometimes needed to be taught. “Uzumaki has also learned to be careful with herself. But that’s just it – these two _have learned_ ; Inuzuka Tsume cannot do that. The amygdala in Inuzuka’s brain is too damaged to produce fear, and thus she truly has no concept of _consequences_. Fear serves a healthy purpose in our lives. It keeps us safe, makes us reconsider foolish ideas that would cause pain, forces us to look harder at situations, and helps produce adrenaline. Inuzuka will always go where even the angels fear treading. Mitarashi _enjoys_ the challenge of going where angels fear treading, but she can usually guide Inuzuka into solutions that aren’t self-destructive. It helps that Inuzuka trusts Mitarashi’s judgment, even when she can’t understand the reasoning behind it.

“Uzumaki is creative, resourceful, and unconventional, so she provides fresh ideas to counter Mitarashi’s sadism, and is the most likeliest to survive whatever Inuzuka lures them into. They listen to and respect each other; their teamwork is solid. And they’re flexible, gentleman. That means they can be molded to do whatever needs to be done – whether it’s infiltration and reconnaissance, tracking and scouting, melee, sabotage, or search and rescue.”

Hiruzen puffed on his pipe a moment as the two Academy teachers considered his words and the team. Then he added, “You’re seeing them as a whole unit based upon some very unfortunate incidents at school.” He ignored their shudders. “You’re seeing each as an individual compared to the rest of the class. You must see them as a whole unit that succeeded rather well in turning Konoha upside down on her head.”

Toushiro poked their stack of files, looking resentful. “How _did_ they manage to get enough molasses to plaster the Monument and then cover it with feathers? What was the _purpose_?”

“I think _that_ alone should prove that their stealth is not something we should worry about. Besides, look at it this way – we’d have to separate the girls to put them on separate teams. That means that you will have _three_ jounin turning their disgruntled eyes upon you. Sakumo has already expressed interest in Inuzuka, and Uzumaki trusts him since he helped her and the other Whirlpool refugees. I’m sure that he wouldn’t even mind Mitarashi’s… unconventional sadism.”

After all, Hatake Sakumo was one of the few persons alive who enjoyed Shimura Danzo’s dubious friendship as much as he respected Danzo’s leadership. Danzo was not an easy man to like. Or to survive under said leadership, even if the White Fang of Konoha was undoubtedly equal in power and skill to any of the Three Sannin. Hiruzen rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “It’s a win-win solution all around!”

Genko looked uncomfortable. “Be that as it may, Hokage-sama, it just doesn’t seem right to put those three together. We saw the damage they could do just in the Academy. What kind of damage would they wind up doing if they’re unleashed as a single _trained_ force against the world?”

Hiruzen briefly considered that possibility, and then shrugged. “As long as the girls are aimed at our enemies, I don’t really care about the damage. More power to them, says I.”

oOoOoOo

The night before graduation, when Tsume had been proudly expecting to stand shoulder to shoulder with her classmates the next day to receive her forehead protector, was the night Grandmother Shinzou took Tsume away from the village. “You’ve been requested for a mission out in the field by the Sannin,” Grandmother told her. Then Grandmother did a double-take as Kakashi skipped past her with purple ribbons in his hair, carrying a basket for Aunt Natsumi.

“Uh, I can explain…” Tsume began as her great-grandmother’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Never mind. I don’t want to hear about it. I’ve already told the Hokage that Orochimaru-sama has requested you for a long-term mission that will take you out of Konoha for at least three months.”

“But what about my team? My sensei – I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be assigned with, yet!”

“They’ll still be here if you survive the mission. Pack a light bag – where you’re going, you’re not going to keep anything, not even underwear.” As Tsume grabbed Kuromaru’s water bowl, Grandmother shook her head.

“No, not that. Kuromaru stays here.”

Tsume reeled back as if she had been struck. “But – but he’s my partner. You don’t leave your partners behind! And don’t I have the right to refuse a mission?”

Grandmother’s grip on her shoulder was painfully harsh. Tsume felt her arm going numb. “I am _not_ giving you the option of refusing. I’ll not have you shame my clan by refusing this mission that Orochimaru-sama has personally requested you for. This mission will make or break you – I expect it to break you, and Kuromaru is too obvious for this mission. Either you leave _with_ me, or I _bury_ you in an unmarked grave. One way or another, my clan will be rid of you, tonight.”

Tsume made one last effort to rile her great-grandmother, to get some kind of reaction that wasn’t this bitter disappointment. “If I can’t take Kuromaru, then he gets to stay with Kakashi – not on the compound.”

Grandmother shrugged. “I don’t care. Do what you need to do to get ready. We leave in one hour.”

Tsume was ready in ten minutes. She then took ten minutes more to write letters to Kokoro and Kushina, telling them not to worry because she would be gone a few months with Grandmother on a special mission, and asking Kushina to watch after Kakashi in Tsume’s absence. Then she spent the next forty minutes clinging to Kakashi and Kuromaru and telling them how much she loved them, because it just wasn’t right that Grandmother told the truth when she said she _didn’t_ care where Kuromaru was sent. Because if the Head of the Inuzuka Clan didn’t care, it meant that Tsume couldn’t expect to return alive.

oOoOoOo

Grass Country looked like a gigantic prairie, Tsume thought. When she had dreamed that she would one day leave Konoha to explore the world, she never expected it to be like this. Grass wasn’t _flat_ like she expected it to be – there were many different hills, vales, gullies, and buttes that disturbed the land, breaking up its uniform structure. It was covered with wild grass and oats taller than Tsume, dotted with patches of sagebrush and thorn apples. There weren’t trees the way she was used to in Fire Country – at least not where they ran, since she had heard of forests of gigantic mushrooms (and could even smell said mushrooms from a great distance away).

Here, the ground was treacherous, and the pace that her great-grandmother set was neck-breaking. Tsume couldn’t see over the top of the grass and Grandmother never let her know when she ought to jump – Tsume learned this the hard way by repeatedly tumbling headfirst into multiple gullies and vales. For all that her nose told her of her surroundings, it was hard to tell how close she really was to big, empty spaces.

Each tumble down through the air meant that one of Grandmother’s ninken hauled her to her feet by the collar of her shirt, like an unruly puppy. But Tsume allowed it to happen – wishing bitterly that it was Kuromaru that dragged her to her feet – and would resume the pace, resolutely ignoring her bruises and scrapes and flagging exhaustion. Grandmother said nothing, but merely watched with flat, uncaring eyes. If she wasn’t always running beyond Tsume’s vision, disappearing into the long grass, then Tsume would be able to watch and time her own jumps just right.

It felt, Tsume thought with a wrench in her heart, like Grandmother was leaving her behind forever.

oOoOoOo

Konoha’s camp was underground. In this part of Grass Country, structures could be easily seen from a distance, which necessitated that quarters be kept below the horizon. Tsume couldn’t decide if the camp looked like an ant hill, or a gopher colony.

As Grandmother gripped Tsume tight by the back of her neck and pulled her through the camp, Tsume decided it was definitely a gopher colony. Way too many holes to be an ant hill. Most of the Konoha forces were barefaced and looked as exhausted as they smelled. They also looked much older than her, even the ones she recognized from her last year’s graduating class. Grandmother brought Tsume to a nondescript hole and pushed her down the tunnel. The tunnel was smooth, if slightly cramped, and led to a wider underground room, about the same size as her bedroom back home.

It was empty, except for a rumpled sleeping roll and a small wooden table, and dimly lit by three oil lamps and a scatter of glowing handprints on the walls. “Sit there and wait,” Grandmother said, pointing. Tsume was quite glad to do so. Her legs felt rubbery and weak after the harsh pace her great-grandmother had set, forcing her to run the last four days on barely any sleep or food. She could smell the countries of Earth and Waterfall. “I’m going to go find him.” Grandmother left with the ninken following at her heels.

Tsume waited a few minutes, but she remained alone. She crawled over to the sleeping roll, ignored the fact that it stank of Orochimaru, wrapped herself up in it, and fell asleep.

She awoke some time later to Orochimaru’s not-so-gentle shaking, sat upright, and rubbed at her eyes. She wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but something told her that ignoring him wouldn’t be in her best interest. Besides, Grandmother never saw fit once in the four days of traveling to tell Tsume anything about the mission, and Tsume wanted to know. Orochimaru’s hair was like a blotch of ink in the dim light, and his skin sallow. She could smell Grandmother waiting just outside the tent. “Did you have a good trip?” Orochimaru asked, though his voice sounded mechanical – as if he didn’t care if she had a good trip or not.

“It was fast,” Tsume said carefully, since Grandmother had reacted severely to the one time she voiced a complaint. Her shoulder still ached miserably from that reaction, although her face had stopped throbbing yesterday, despite the ongoing bruising on the left side of her jaw and cheek.

“You did make good time to be here, especially with the recent Academy graduation.” Orochimaru sat cross-legged in front of her, studying her face. His emotions were hard to detect, although she could smell the curiosity and… hatred? She couldn’t tell. Not even Danzo had made his emotions so invisible to her nose. Maybe Orochimaru didn’t _feel_ much of anything, which really went far in explaining why Jiraiya called him a heartless ass. “I wish I didn’t have to do this,” he said finally. “But we’re losing in Iwa. If we don’t get more information, we’ll lose the warfront here, and that could allow Ame to regroup and strike at us again, and we don’t have the forces to continue slogging through a standstill.”

She sat upright and matched his posture, sitting cross-legged with her hands on her knees. “What can I do to help Konoha?” she asked, dutifully.

“Did you learn the ANBU signs?”

 _Yes,_ she signed, eager to showcase her newly acquired skill. _Yuu put in my head. We practiced._

“Good, good. Now, let me give you some details. This is not… you do not _have_ to accept this assignment, regardless of what your grandmother may have said. It will be very risky; twelve kunoichi have already lost their lives – Uchiha, Yamanaka, Hyuuga. The best of the best. I’ve tried everything else that I could think of to obtain this information, sending people to different places. I’ve tried infiltration, snakes, buying informants and moles, everything. But the moment we got close, people – and snakes – are killed. They kill anyone who asks questions regardless of how innocent those questions may appear to be. If they sense the person has chakra of a ninja and aren’t in the inner circles, that person winds up dead. I’m hoping it will be different for you, because you don’t have to ask questions or poke around. You just have to keep your nose open… But you’re so young – just a baby, really.” He tugged one of her spiky locks of hair with a maudlin smirk. “And to think I was once your age.”

As Orochimaru looked at her, Tsume suspected he was having second thoughts about giving her the mission. She had to do this – she knew she shouldn’t be trying to prove Grandmother wrong, but something like this would do more – it would prove to _Tsume_ something.

“I’m not scared,” Tsume said, reaching out to touch him. He stared down at where she had placed her hand lightly against his. “It needs to be done, right? For Konoha. So I’ll do it.” Because if she could do this, proving herself capable to Grandmother, then she would make the second step to becoming Clan Head. Tsume’s plan was very simple. Step 1: Become a ninja. She had already succeeded at this, even if Grandmother had dragged her out of Konoha before she could get the forehead protector that she worked so hard to earn. Step 2: Do great things, be noticed. Step 3: Become Clan Head, after being recognized via Step 2, after Grandmother eventually kicked the bucket.

Orochimaru was a tall, lean man, but there was something about him that seemed wilted – and hungry. And angry. She didn’t know if she smelled the emotions so much as she felt them. “There’s a part of me that says I shouldn’t be asking you to do this mission – that I shouldn’t even consider anyone even close to your age.”

“Then don’t ask.” Tsume tried to draw herself up and look as grown-up as possible. Which probably wasn’t such a great success, because she knew that if any human could be the runt of a litter, it would be her. (She always added an extra five centimeters to her height, just to make sure her hair was accurately represented.) “I’m agreeing to this, and you just tell me what I need to do.”

Orochimaru gently took her hand, so very little, into his own. “Why not? There’s much more at stake than just you.” He straightened. There was a predatory gleam in his eye. “Still, you must know more before you agree to this mission. I may be more ruthless than my teammates, but not so much that I do this without feeling some level of remorse. Your great-grandmother is going to sell you into sex slavery.” Orochimaru paused as he studied her face.

Was Tsume supposed to act surprised? Shocked? She knew the bare mechanics of sex and that it usually didn’t involve people as young as her, but she had been watching her clan breed pups for years. Or was it because her great-grandmother would do the selling? Well, it certainly sounded like something Grandmother _would_ do anyway, so… Tsume shrugged, unable to give Orochimaru a verbal response.

“You’re going to become a child prostitute in a brothel that is frequented by the strongest, the most cruel shinobi leaders of Iwa. You won’t have backup – once you’re sold, you will have no way of contacting us. We will not even attempt to contact you for two months, minimum. You may not even survive the brutality as a prostitute alone, even without asking questions, because I will put a seal on you that will convert the sense of your chakra into desire. These will be harsh, cruel men who have no qualms brutalizing your body. It will be vicious, it will be painful, it will be lonely, and if you do survive – I’m not sure you’ll want to. It will change you, but not for the better. Is this S-ranked mission something you are still willing to accept?”

If she did turn down the mission, Tsume didn’t think that Grandmother was going to bother with another four days of travel to return to Konoha when there was probably a shallow ditch outside the camp useful enough to bury a twelve-year-old simpleton. It would be more practical to do the mission and, quite frankly, probably had a lower casualty risk. (Inuzuka Shinzou versus S-rank Iwa nin? Yeah, she’d have a better chance surviving the Iwa nin.) Tsume cocked her head to the side, and gave him the honest truth, “I’m not scared.”

Orochimaru looked at her with something like hunger. “What must it be like, to never know the paralysis of fear? To never have your hand or your mind stayed from difficult choices and decisions? It seems that no matter how powerful a shinobi may be, there will always be that level of fear, to be frightened of death or failure. But to be powerful _and_ to not experience fear – how liberating that must be.”

She squirmed uncomfortably. Was she supposed to answer those questions?

Orochimaru’s voice dropped into a whisper. “Do you fear death?”

Did she? Tsume tried to imagine death. She thought it would be like a black, endless nothingness, smothered in dirt, and only felt sadness because she didn’t want to leave Kakashi or Kuromaru behind. “I don’t think so. Probably not.”

Orochimaru squeezed her hand tightly for a moment before saying, “I fear death. But death is something that should be overcome, and you did so once already. Your mind was dead, but the Slug Princess brought it back to life. Ah, but not all of it; you never fully recovered the extensive damage to your amygdala. It would seem that which is dead will remain like that, in some part. Fascinating.”

Tsume looked elsewhere from his eyes. She didn’t feel fear… but she was starting to feel very uncomfortable, like she wanted to scrub her skin until the creepy-crawly sensation was scraped away from her insides.

Orochimaru dropped her hand. “If you can tell us how many troops, their supplies, where the supplies come from, and where they’re stationed – at least the leaders, it could be enough to win the war. If I can take out the head, then the body will fall. I need to know where, when, who, and how many so I can wipe them out.”

The smell of her great-grandmother hadn’t changed – maybe that meant that Tsume shouldn’t feel so uncomfortable with Orochimaru. On the other hand, it _was_ her great-grandmother, so maybe she had every right to feel uncomfortable. “Okay. But how am I going to tell you my information if no one’s contacting me?”

“After two months – perhaps in three or four – I will send someone to you. There must be a lengthy absence of you being beyond contact, so as not to attract suspicion. You’ll need to get the contact alone with you, and report the information via the hand signs you learned, without being caught. Anticipate having sex with your contact – not an ideal situation we encourage between our ninjas in the field – but look at all your options when you’re there, and figure out how to do it. That’s imperative – _you cannot get caught._ I think that if no words are exchanged to prevent chance of eavesdropping, if the hand signs are made out of sight, the contact will be in and out of there without alarm. Therefore it’s most ideal for your contact to hire you for sex, and for you to service him as a prostitute. Exactly how you’d do anyone else, even the Iwa shinobi.

“But now I need to put this seal on you, and your grandmother has to remove you out of the camp before we run the risk of my men gangbanging you to death before we can even get you on the auction block.” There was something sinister about his smile. “Virgins do sell better than used goods.” Orochimaru stood up, and gestured. “Now rise, and remove your clothes.”

She blinked owl-eyed up at him. “What? Why?”

He made an impatient noise before reaching down and yanking her to her feet. “I have to put the seal somewhere on your body that it won’t be detected by anyone who pays for your services. Which means I need to look at you in your entirety.”

The need to wash herself increased as Tsume stripped off her clothes, even her underwear at his repeated order. She shivered in the cool air as his gaze burned over her. She and Kakashi often bathed naked together (mostly because she got drenched when bathing Kakashi as he practiced water attacks, so it just seemed practical to take her own bath at the same time), but Orochimaru was… well, he wasn’t Kakashi.

He twirled a finger, and she wordlessly turned around in a circle, fighting down the urge to cover herself with her hands. “You look like an ugly boy,” he said disdainfully. He tossed the clothes back to her. “Good thing the seal will make up for your lack of attraction.” After dressing, he told her to sit.

Orochimaru knelt down beside her and took her bare foot into his hand. He looked at her toes critically. “Short of anyone with a foot fetish, this is the safest place.” Then he bit her big toe.

“Hey! Ouch!” He ducked her kicking foot. She saw silver-purple characters scroll across her entire leg, flashing heat and tingles across her body as it stretched upward to her collarbones, flickered against her skin, and then retreated down under her toenail, which turned into a solid purple color. Her head and body buzzed. “What did you _do_?”

“I placed a siren seal on your body.” Orochimaru’s eyes seemed to glimmer in the lantern light, and his mouth twisted into an ugly smile. “Even as you are, nothing more than a genin with barely any chakra worth mentioning, it’s enough to be considered a threat that must be removed at all costs when you cross paths with the people you’re supposed to get information from. This seal will convert their awareness of your chakra into lust, and with any luck, you won’t be the thirteenth kunoichi I’ll lose. Now, leave.”

Tsume started for the entrance. She heard Orochimaru move – the rustle of his clothes – and then felt one of his arms wrap around her shoulders and pull her back against his chest. In the corner of her vision, a cascade of black hair obscured Orochimaru’s face. His voice was smooth and low as he whispered in her ear, and his other hand stroked the inside of her thigh. “When you do not experience emotion – or fear, in your case – then there’s an empty hole within looking to be filled; it creates a vacuum, which – for good or for bad – nature abhors. You’re going into this mission with a very large void, and you’re going to immerse yourself in the most vile degradations ever devised by humans. _Heed my warning_. I have seen the void, child, and it has seen me – _it is inside of me._ You too will also have to stare into your own void, so fill it with something you can tolerate staring back at you. If you don’t fill it, the ugly depravity will do so for you.”

oOoOoOo

Ten days later, Tsume stood on a sloping alpine meadow over a town that Grandmother refused to name, but said was barely half a day’s travel from Earth’s own Hidden Village. (Tsume believed Grandmother, since she could smell a city that was full of Iwa shinobi.) Grandmother looked worn and bruised, mainly because she and her ninken had spent too much time and energy battling petty bandits and miners who went after Tsume with ugly lights in their eyes. Apparently, men didn’t have to have a lot of chakra – or any, from the looks of some of those bandits and miners – to be influenced by Orochimaru’s seal. Grandmother had left her forehead protector with Orochimaru and removed her clan markings, but kept her ninken. Now, the ninken hid downslope several kilometers away in a cluster of aspen; it would not do to be seen by ninjas lurking or lingering in the town.

Grandmother knelt on front of Tsume and put her hands on Tsume’s shoulders. “If one of us should die before seeing each other,” Grandmother began, in a way that clearly made it sound like she fully expected Tsume to be the one to croak first, “I want you to know that you were never… unloved.”

Tsume knew she should stay her tongue, but she didn’t like the cool, detached look in her great-grandmother’s eyes. “But I wasn’t wanted.” And besides, what was the worst that could be happen at this point if she revealed her thoughts? Tsume was already set to be sold into sex slavery. “You know, it’s hard to feel loved when you’re not wanted.”

“True.”

Tsume struggled not to cry. “All I ever wanted was to be loved and wanted by you. You were the only mother I ever had, and I did everything I could except roll over and die to make you happy.”

Grandmother shrugged. “If you truly wanted that, then you should never have tried getting yourself killed by the Uchiha. So if you must hate anyone, hate them.”

“What?” Killed by _who_? Sure, she kicked some of the Uchiha boys in the balls every now and again, and had developed an admittedly questionable hobby out of giving Fugaku a hard time, but she didn’t think that qualified as a _death_ wish. “Why?” _They_ weren’t selling her into sex slavery. Besides, that was Shinobi Rule #49 (hibiscus tea with lemon): _Shinobi must not hate their enemies, for hatred makes one blind to one’s own weaknesses, allowing one to be manipulated and exploited by the enemies._ Which was why she tried not to be hateful or bitter towards her great-grandmother. (Tsume also wondered if she was the only one who remembered many of the Shinobi Rules after #30, and thought it just wasn’t fair that she had been forced to memorize all fifty rules.)

“Because Uchiha did this to you.” Grandmother tapped Tsume’s forehead. “You sniffed some _thing_ out in the forest, it found you, and it destroyed you. It made you weak, and brought undue attention to our clan of predators. There are very few left alive who’d remember _Uchiha Madara_. And since I couldn’t hunt down the threat, I turned on you – weak, pitiful, worthless.”

“You said I pushed the limit!”

“ _I_ never said _which_ limit. Or _whose._ ”

Lies and deceit, all wrapped up in pretty layers of truth. Tsume rubbed at her eyes, smearing tears across her bruised face. _I was a puppy. No pup should ever be unwanted._ “If you’re trying to make me feel better before you get rid of me, you’re doing a really lousy job.” Then she scrubbed at her dripping nose.

“I’m not trying to make you feel better.” Grandmother stood and turned to face the town. “I’m trying to give you a purpose to help you push forward through the dark times you’ll be facing alone.”

 _(“I have seen the void, child, and it has seen me – **it is inside of me**.”)_ Tsume wondered if Grandmother also had a void, and whether it haunted her in the same way that Orochimaru’s void haunted him.

Tsume vowed then, as Grandmother dragged her down the rocky incline to the town below, stinking of fires and filth, where she would soon be sold to Madame Haori’s Privileged Palace of Pleasure for a thousand ryou, that she would fill her own void with light and love and fluffy puppies. So that way, when she looked into her void, she would eagerly throw herself at it with arms open wide, instead of cringing backwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pivotal chapter. It starts to get really dark past this point; heed the posted warnings, please.


	8. Alpha years - Chapter Five

Danzo had no difficulty finding Orochimaru’s pit, despite never before gracing the main Konoha camp in Grass. It seemed highly apropos that a summoner of snakes would live in a hole in the ground. It was little wonder that Orochimaru’s teammates rarely visited the camp – Tsunade and Jiraiya didn’t seem like hole-in-the-ground sorts.

“Good of you to come when called,” Orochimaru said without looking up from his spread papers. Danzo squinted at the stack, his eye not adjusting to the light difference as quickly as it once could, Orochimaru waved him to take a seat on the cushion. Danzo shoved the cushion aside in favor of the uneven dirt floor.

“I do not take lightly to summons, especially from young brats,” Danzo said impatiently, crossing his arms in front of himself. “This had better be worth interrupting my plans.”

Orochimaru’s smile was twisted and hollow. It made Danzo’s insides swim. “I wasn’t aware that Konoha’s War Hawk had any particular plans – not when Suna was defeated by the likes of the White Fang, and Ame’s forces are scattered and smashed after _we_ fought the Salamander.” Half-truths; the White Fang was only one of the major defining factors that helped take down Suma’s forces – Danzo had taught Sakumo after all, and in this case the student hadn’t yet surpassed the teacher. Still, Danzo refused to show how such a deliberately glib mark irritated him. He and Orochimaru never made any attempt to get along more civilly than what protocol required, and the tension between them had worsened in the last few years when Orochimaru made known his interest in succeeding Sarutobi Hiruzen as the next Hokage.

“You’re twenty years too young with too little to impress me. Besides, someone has to decide which of our forces need to be left behind for cleanup, and which needs to be reorganized and sent to Grass to join the fight against Iwa.”

“Hmm. Indeed. A prospect which could be more efficiently-run with more information…” Before Orochimaru said anything more, his fingers flashed through multiple seals before casting a powerful jutsu that prevented others from listening or watching them, coating the room in a deep mauve-colored barrier that shimmered and reflected lantern light. “…when we obtain information from my spy in Tetsuzanshi.”

Surprise made Danzo’s eye widen. “You managed to successfully infiltrate with a spy?”

“I needn’t remind you that this Black Ops mission is S-rank. My girl is in deep. More importantly, she’s been able to _survive_ the sixteen weeks she’s spent in Madame Haori’s Palace of Pleasure without any backup or assistance from Konoha, although I’ve insured that she cannot possibly be considered a threat when the Iwa shinobi frequent Madame Haori’s.”

Danzo studied Orochimaru. The bastard seemed quite smug – Danzo supposed that he had every right to be. Danzo knew of at least eight failed attempts to root out information on Iwa’s leaders and its armies, since Tetsuzanshi was the closest they could physically get to the Hidden Village of Stone. “What do you need me to do?” One wasn’t read into any Black Ops without viable reasons, especially Ops ranking above B.

Black Ops, after all, didn’t exist. That was the point of them. The fewer people who knew of the Black Ops, the better the success rate. ANBU was involved with most of Konoha’s Black Ops, but not all Black Ops involved ANBU. Even when ANBU was involved, knowledge and information was limited only to the need-to-know. ANBU didn’t really have a formal hierarchy beyond squad leaders. As much as Danzo was considered to be the squad leader of squad leaders amongst the ANBU due to his experience and responsibility in training new recruits, his fellow captains were truly answerable only to the Hokage, who in turn was the only individual who knew the depths and entirety of all Black Ops. (Danzo sometimes wondered if that was really a good idea, seeing as how a Hokage’s unexpected death could potentially collapse their entire intelligence community.)

“I need someone to infiltrate Madame Haori’s under the pretext of business, to cross paths with and obtain my spy’s report. No words are to be exchanged – she is aware that she is only to communicate with ANBU sign language.” Which meant only someone from ANBU – active or past – would qualify as spy or contact. And considering _this_ particular Black Ops, both persons had to have a high security clearance. “I’ve already warned her that she may have to … perform, to hide the true purpose of both of you.”

Danzo didn’t have the energy to squirm uncomfortably in his seat. It wouldn’t be the first time he had sex with someone for information – whether it was a Konoha ally or enemy – and it probably wouldn’t be the last. He was willing to do whatever – or whoever, as the case may be – for Konoha.

Orochimaru’s expression was filled with dark amusement. “It will not be easy to sleep with her, Danzo-sama.” Meaning: information will be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain if he didn’t.

“Neither of us have any limits on what we are unwilling to do, in order to ensure mission success.”

“Indeed.” The acknowledgement that such was why Danzo had been requested from Wind was left unsaid. “Danzo-sama can _always_ be trusted to do what needs to be done, so matter how… disturbing or difficult. But mainly it helps that you have been very good at keeping your identity as a Konoha nin shrouded, and that you’re strong enough to survive and escape if caught.” Danzo ignored the warning bell that rang in the back of his mind. He had done many things that he ought to be ashamed of in the past, but this was the fate of those who lived and worked in the dark roots, so that the leaves could forever be bathed in sunlight. “Because she is Black Ops, you will leave her there after obtaining the intel. She is to remain a mole to gather intel for Konoha for years to come.”

That was the most terrifying part of the Black Ops – once you’re in as an informant, it took an act of God (or the Hokage, which was one and the same these days) to get out. And even the God of Shinobi, as much as he loved reaching for the sunlight, knew too well the necessity of darkness. “Ah.”

Orochimaru’s eyes gleamed. “We’ve lost too many kunoichi in the past to overlook a successful mole who is _finally_ turning up pay dirt.”

Danzo held his hands up, palms out, in a placating move. “I am not arguing with you, Sannin-sama.” He deliberately didn’t keep the touch of sarcasm out of his voice. “I will do what needs to be done for Konoha. Do I know this kunoichi?”

“Yes.” And that was the only answer Orochimaru provided as Danzo was given a scroll detailing where to find Madame Haori’s Palace of Pleasure. “I won’t demean Konoha’s War Hawk by providing you a timeline or directions. I know that your time is valuable, and that you’re too experienced to require hand-holding through the process.” Orochimaru waved him away. “Actually, it’s quite a relief, knowing I can trust your experience and judgment with this delicate matter.”

Worthless words, Danzo thought as he left, coming from the overseer who _wouldn’t_ identity of the informant Danzo was supposed to find. He hoped this meant he wasn’t going to have to sleep with every woman at the Palace until he found the spy – he cared less for the pleasures of a woman’s flesh than a man’s. But since this was Black Ops and the spy would be familiar with the ANBU dictionary, he felt assured that the spy would be a familiar active or retired ANBU kunoichi with whom he had worked in the past.

oOoOoOo

A week later, Danzo entered Tetsuzanshi. The place was cobbled together with thick, uneven slabs of wood and rock, including the walls that surrounded the village, as well as the ramshackle buildings within the walls. The air stank heavily from the smoke belching from the refineries’ smoke stacks. A thin layer of black soot covered everything. The people who walked the streets were as grim and as bleak as their surroundings, their clothes well-worn and well-repaired. It was vastly different from Konoha and all her bright colors and bright buildings, and even brighter faces.

Danzo fit in perfectly. He had shed his forehead protector and exchanged the wrappings around his head that covered his scarred right eye socket for a single leather eye patch. It gave him a harder edge, one that he used to his advantage. His shinobi uniform had been switched out for rough leathers and wools in earthen tones; the clothes looked as rough as he felt as he strode the streets of Tetsuzanshi with a well-faked familiarity.

It would not do to head immediately for the Palace. Instead, he wandered over the crowded markets where sellers were loud and vibrant about their wares. He allowed himself to be buffeted through the milling crowd, to be seen by different visitors and residents. He felt the presence of others’ chakra signatures around him – visiting Kumo nin from their Hidden Village, Iwa nin, and some Ame stragglers – and knew they also felt his own. But he had been careful with what he suppressed – enough to make him look like a mildly-dangerous bandit, but not enough to be an immediate threat.

He bought goods that would look like he was replenishing long-term supplies; packages of tea, rice, seasonings, dried meat, some hardy turnips and radishes that would keep well enough to last one for a few weeks if needed. He was careful not to flash his money around – just a few coins passed hand over hand to buy what was needed. He was observant at the market, and didn’t bother hiding it as he noted those who watched him. _Don’t fuck with me, and I won’t fuck with you,_ he said with his body language and gaze. (He also didn’t hesitate to break the questing hand of one stupid-but-brave pickpocket.)

Danzo allowed his meandering saunter to wander from the market into other commercial districts, where restaurants, pubs, shops, and inns could be found. He kept walking until he reached the end of the street, where a depleted inn stood backed against an alley, the sort that would be in his budget. He studied it a moment – it looked like it hosted more cockroaches of the insect kind than the human kind – and then entered the building.

After paying for one night at the room, he asked the innkeeper, “Where can a man go to have fun in town?” He deliberately adopted an accent that would place him from the southeastern region of Stone.

The innkeeper peered at him from beneath two thick, white eyebrows, eyes barely seen. Then he twitched his thicker mustache in thought. “Depends on what sort of fun yer lookin’ fer.”

“Young,” Danzo said with a deliberate pause. “Female. _Clean_.”

“Hoh. Yer best bet would be d’ Palace – the Madame takes good care of her girls, and she’s gotta good choice of d’ goods. Iffen ye gots the money. Clean girls ain’t cheap, yeah.”

“One good clean fuck is worth more than ten diseased ones, yeah.”

“Oh hum.” The innkeeper shrugged, diffident.

“When’re they open for business?”

“Earlier dan most, yeah. The Madame feels suppertime’s a fortunate time indeed. Iffen you gots the money, you gets food _an’_ a fuck. ‘s a good deal, yeah.”

oOoOoOo

Since the Iwa nin were far less likely to frequent brothels during daylight, no doubt favoring darkness to cover their comings and goings, Danzo left to check the place out just before “suppertime” was likely to start. He made sure that his path to the Palace – if the maps of Orochimaru’s that he memorized were correct – brought him the long way through town, while still bypassing the most desperate parts. As tough a bandit as he wanted to appear, he didn’t want attention drawn to himself by wandering into someone else’s turf and then having to fight his way out.

Danzo had expected strays for the town – stray dogs, wild cats, something. He saw a number of wild rats, bold in the receding daylight as they stood on their hindquarters and watching him before returning to the piles of refuse that lined the alleys. The neighborhoods closer to the Palace were nicer in quality and maintenance – a high-end brothel that was notorious for an all-female staff, which included the permanent employment of multiple Iwa kunoichi— and dealt harshly with any crime that took place nearby, even as its presence attracted the most unsavory characters. Iwa’s Hidden Village didn’t have brothels; the Palace was the closest and of the best quality.

The Palace was huge and sprawled long – easily the size of its name – a gaudy structure of stone that was washed frequently, making it that much more of a blot in the townscape because it wasn’t dirtied with soot as the rest of Tetsuzanshi. It was surrounded by a stone fence, from which sharp, deadly pikes jutted outward on the top. He had a sneaking suspicion that sharp glass would line the stone in between the deadly pikes. Every now and again, heavily-reinforced oak doors marked the walls as possible entrances.

One such door was open, as a small figure, dirty and clothed in a simple white shift, crouched in the entrance and fed a few of the town’s stray dogs. Her face was bare of any markings, and her hair poked out wildly in all directions like a hedgehog. He didn’t let the sudden spike of recognition falter his step or light his eye. He did slow his pace, as one might if curious.

Danzo’s first emotion, as she raised her small eyes to meet his, was anger – fucking Orochimaru – and his second, as lust unexpectedly punched through his gut, was desire.

“Tsume! Are you feeding the damn dogs again?”

Tsume jumped at the sound of the calling voice. She quickly shooed the dogs away with a wave of her hand. “Maybe!” she yelled over her shoulder. With one last flick of her eyes at him – curious recognition – she grasped the door’s iron ring and pulled it shut. He heard the bolt slide in place, and an older woman’s voice reprimanding Tsume for disobedience. One of the dogs whined and scratched forlornly at the door.

_It will not be easy to sleep with her, Danzo-sama._

Fuck Orochimaru. Danzo would do what needed to be done for Konoha. And if it wasn’t in Konoha’s best interests, Orochimaru’s head would wind up on a pike within a month of completing this mission.

oOoOoOo

“Will you be staying in town for long, Shigeru-sama?” Danzo followed the young woman into the “dining room.” Her face was heavily powdered and exquisitely painted, and her crimson kimono artfully draped to reveal one pale shoulder and a great deal of cleavage. Said dining room was filled with multiple tented booths – the better for which to keep the customer’s identity hidden. (Not too well – he saw a glimpse of three other men being led to their own private booths.)

“Just enough to satisfy basic needs,” Danzo replied. She smiled at him in a vapid manner – Madame Haori taught her girls to make light conversation, but not to pry. He slid into the plush leather booth she gestured and ignored the prickling of his skin in warning at the thought of not being able to see his surroundings.

“Do you have a preference, or would you prefer a menu?” Her voice was demur as she knelt on the seat beside him, the robes drawn back reveal a slender pale thigh. He looked at it with some interest, fingers twitching as if tempted to slide his hand up her thigh, and into the hidden depths of her parted robes.

“I prefer them young,” he said, drawing back to look at her face. “Wild and bold, yeah. Do you have any recommendations?”

She tilted her head to the side. “How young? Puberty? Early or late teenaged years?”

He gave her a show of his teeth. “My preference is… well, let’s start at puberty and work our way up from there, yeah.”

She slid an arm around his shoulders and leaned against him. One hand idly played with his hair. The skin on his neck prickled in warning. “At that age, very few are wild and bold – they’re usually more of the meek and obedient side.”

He phrased his desires very carefully in order to manipulate the possibility of getting Tsume right away. He could only bank on her personality not changing too much during her stay at the brothel. “I don’t like them to lay there like broken dolls. If I wanted nothing but a warm body to ride, there’s plenty of stray women in my neck of the woods that I can drag into the bushes, yeah. If I’m paying for it, I want them eager and wanton, yeah.”

“Hmmm.” The woman withdrew from him slightly. “Well, Tsume-chan isn’t wanton, but she’s certainly the bold type. And young. She’s quite popular, but you may be in luck for having arrived so early.”

He felt a rush of adrenaline, but was careful not to let his respiration or facial expression change. “What an unusual name. Talon – I’d expect something flowery or soft for whores, yeah.”

She shrugged, and bravely slid a hand up his thigh. “Well, you _are_ looking for bold. Otherwise, perhaps I could introduce you to Usagi, or Hotaru.”

“Meek names.”

Her lips were whispery soft as she dragged them across his cheek. “Meek girls.”

He pulled her hand away from his thigh, and leaned forward to draw a deep breath at the nape of her neck. “Let’s try this bold girl – this Tsume – and see if she’s to my liking.”

The woman smiled as she tilted her head back. “Perhaps what you need is a bold woman, sir.”

He let his gaze roam down her face and into her cleavage. He drew up a hand and cupped a heavy breast, weighing it. “You’re a little too… mature for me,” he whispered, dropping his hand. She didn’t look offended as she slid out of the booth and let the heavy curtain sway shut behind her. He settled back against the uncomfortably-soft seat. He cast his senses out without chakra, trying to get a feel of what was going on around him. He knew that they were surrounded by kunoichi – Madame Haori was a no-nonsense woman who maintained the health of her goods, but also made sure that none of the whores were kunoichi themselves. It appeared less threatening to her customers.

His gut churned at the thought of Tsume and sex. He remembered her as an inquisitive child – ten years old, all bristly hair, knobby knees, and sun-kissed skin. He remembered her from Sakumo’s letters, but couldn’t recall if she ever expressed interest or attraction in boys. In many ways, she saw Sakumo more of a father figure than an older brother-in-law-of-sorts, and often sought his advice. She had been far more interested in pranking her fellow students with her two girl friends, playing fetch with her dog, and caring for Kakashi than being interested in boys.

Danzo leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, hiding his face in his hands as uncertainty made his head spin. He had done a lot of foul deeds in his lifetime – but none of them had ever involved sex with a preteen. He dropped his hands at the sound of approaching footsteps, and leaned back, arrogant confidence restored in his body language. The woman who had escorted him previously arrived with a tray of appetizers and a mug of hot tea. The money he had been willing to part with hadn’t been enough for a full meal. “You’re in luck,” she said with a purring voice as she slid the tray across the table to him. “It’s a little early for her shift, but Tsume-chan is free.” The woman winked before leaving. “So whet your appetite – I know that hers is quite voracious for one so young.”

Mind and stomach both churned in disgust as he poked through the appetizers – delicate stacks of colorful crackers topped with cheeses and meats, and artfully carved vegetables, all fanned out on the silver platter. Tsume had looked barely unchanged from the last time he had seen her – young, boyish, dirty. He didn’t know how she would react to seeing a familiar Konoha face. He hoped she wouldn’t be her normal impetuous self – it was a good way to get them both killed. He forced himself to eat the crackers and vegetables, praying his stomach would hold down the food despite the churning. Damn it – Shimura Danzo was _not_ nervous. No Inuzuka woman was going to intimidate him anymore, no matter how young or how vivacious she was. No situation was going to make him hesitate ever again.

_For Konoha._ Any and all means to the end. _This is what it means to be in the darkness of the supporting roots._ Orochimaru had chosen Danzo to carry out the mission, because Danzo wouldn’t hesitate or botch this opportunity. No doubt Orochimaru had chosen Tsume because she didn’t need to ask questions to sniff out answers. If she could tell, from more than five kilometers away, what Hatake Sakumo had last eaten, currently wore, and health status was, then she didn’t even need to have sex with the Iwa shinobi to obtain details.

Danzo’s hand froze, the mug of tea half-way raised to his lips as the next thought wormed through his brain – an ugly, slippery thought that sent shivers racing up and down his spine.

Tsume didn’t even have to be in the same building to sniff out the Iwa shinobi in detail; perhaps even the same damn city _block_.

Orochimaru, he thought, fingers tightening around the mug, was going to _die_.

He hurriedly drank the tea, ignoring how it burned down his gullet and settled with the food into a hard lump. By the time he had his fill, he heard soft approaching footsteps. They were louder than he expected from a Konoha genin – but not, he supposed, for a preteen whore. An olive-skinned arm slid through the curtain first, and then gently parted it for Tsume to slide through. Her wild hair had been carefully smoothed out and tied into two separate pigtails. He wondered how long it took to tame her hair – that alone must’ve taken hours and a crew of hairdressers. She wore a pleated skirt and a simple white blouse, and subtle makeup highlighted her eyes and cheeks. Tsume wasn’t exactly a pretty child – and this particularly ugly duckling did _not_ have the potential to blossom into a swan. Still, surprisingly, the makeup didn’t hurt.

Desire and arousal burned through Danzo’s veins the moment he saw her. Confusion filled his mind – he didn’t know why he wanted her, especially since women weren’t his usual fare for sexual pleasure – as she smiled at him, all teeth and bravado. “Hi,” she said with too much cheer. She pulled herself into the booth, letting the curtain close behind her. She reached out and walked two fingers up his thigh, towards the quickly-forming bulge in his pants. As her fingers walked, they clumsily flashed signs at him. _Always watched and listened by three kunoichi in back end of room. Take me dog facing head._ He grasped her wrist, short of her hand cupping him. Her hand was still small. It was engulfed in his fist.

“Would Shigeru-sama like to start here,” Tsume’s voice shouldn’t be this husky, “or should we go to my room?” She batted her eyes at him. He wordlessly shoved her out of the booth and scooted after. Anger and lust pulsed through his body. Danzo had disciplined his body, forcing it to overcome normal desires of function – he could go without sleep, endure pain and temperature extremes, and forgo food and water in order to succeed at whatever he set his mind to. _Men have two heads – and I refuse to let the one below my belt rule me._

Somehow, this slip of a girl was igniting fire, and she was going to destroy both of them in the flames.

Danzo sensed the three chakra signatures of the kunoichi she had mentioned following them. He also sensed other attention and desires follow them – or Tsume, rather. She led him through the dining hall, and up a grand, wooden staircase. An ornate crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling and cast rainbows of light. Tsume laughed and danced through them, tugging his hand eagerly.

Down the hall she led him, past rooms with various occupancies, until they reached one that was painted all in red and set aglow by a small, overhanging chandelier. The room smelled of patchouli and cinnamon, and the carpet was thick and soft beneath their feet. The bed was covered with brown velvet bedding, looking soft enough to sink into. Thankfully, it wasn’t bright, and the window was covered with a frosted tint that kept the room dim. Tsume locked the door behind them.

“Please, Shigeru-sama, please. Sit.” She flapped her hands at the opulent upholstered chair; it was red to match the room, with a gold fringe. Danzo allowed her to tug him into place, mind working overtime. Was he supposed to react to the desire? He knew that something wasn’t right for his natural defenses and rigorous discipline to be so easily swept aside. His breathing hitched as she crawled into his lap, too light and too little, and slid her arms around his neck. “How would you like to do this?” she asked softly, tugging at the buttons of his shirt. “Fast and lots of times? Or slow and drawn out?”

He didn’t know how the hell one could be slow and draw it out when the combined desire and lust made his vision water and heart pound. As she planted dry kisses at his jawline, he felt her hips undulating against his. Each slide of her body against his pelvis fanned the flames higher and made revulsion claw up his throat. Sweat broke out on his forehead, under his arms, the palms of his hands. He found said hands stroking back of her thighs, and forced them still. “I think…” Danzo swallowed. His mouth felt dry. “I think fast and furious is a good way to start. Yeah.”

“Mmm. But don’t you want to explore?” She grinned and slid off his lap to kneel between his knees. She leaned forward and nose-nuzzled the outline of his erection through his pants. Her lips followed where her nose had been. “I’m quite curious about _you_.” One of her hands, hidden between her hair and his thigh, signed, _Put on a show for watchers._ And since she wasn’t talking, then the watchers also had to be listening.

For Konoha…

Danzo stood abruptly, and walked around her. He seated himself on the edge of the bed and tried not to feel filthy and contaminated as he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest, “Strip.”

Tsume did, dancing and giggling. There was nothing sexy with the way she jumped out of her blouse and shimmied out of her skirt and panties. She still looked boney, but not quite boyish. The sight of her body, caught between child and woman, was gangly and awkward. Her breasts were barely budding and her hips were slightly curved, indicating a gradual widening of the pelvis. She only had a little bit of hair covering her pubes. He felt old and decrepit as the remains of his soul shriveled and his arousal grew. There was _nothing_ there to desire! Danzo preferred his women to be full, rounded, soft – and his men too (though sexual encounters of _that_ nature were few and far between in missions).

Trying to convince his cock of this was impossible. Everything that she did only heightened his need to take her and do filthy things. _For Konoha._ He was sure he had done worse things in the past than this, although he was having a very difficult time remembering them as she clapped her hands and looked at him. “Shigeru-sama, you still have your clothes on!” Tsume reached up and started tugging at his buttons again. This time, she popped them free, one by one.

“I was waiting for you,” Danzo murmured, all too aware of the three chakra signatures that lurked outside the walls. Was he supposed to react positively, or was this a test that the Iwa nin might have to wean out possibly shinobi like him? Tsume tugged his shirt off and carefully draped it on the chair. Then she slid his boots off and stuffed his socks into them after making a wry face. He was sure she smelled worse. Her hands trailed up his legs as she knelt once more between his knees. Danzo’s stomach was fluttering now, no longer churning in revulsion, but instead with disgusting anticipation. She traced him with one small hand, watching his face.

When Tsume winked at him and unzipped his fly, Danzo figured that meant he was supposed to react in desire. She was far too skilled in drawing out his erection from his pants – but then she gave him a wide-eyed look of surprise that reminded him all too much of how young she looked when they first met, with a squirming baby in her arms and a diaper bag slung from her shoulder.

Two short years ago.

She had only been ten fucking years old.

“Gosh,” she said, in a voice that made him want to crawl to a corner and commit seppuku, “you’re… awfully big.” She shyly traced the broad length of him, from base to hilt. He forced his eyes not to flutter shut at the burning pleasure. She leaned forward and kissed the tip, and then her pink tongue darted out to taste. He forced his hips not to surge forward or his hands to sink into her hair.

Tsume was thorough as she explored him with her mouth and hands. By the time he was panting and clenching the bedcovers in his fists, his cock glistened with her saliva. She looked shy as she dragged his pants down and off. “I still think you’re overdressed, sir.”

“Fuck that.” He couldn’t let her continue touching him. He wanted to die. He wanted to kill her to make it stop. He wanted to never stop touching her. With a bruising grip, Danzo yanked Tsume to her feet and flipped her on to the bed. He ignored the fluttering of two of the watching chakras – all chakra signatures were in the opposite corners in the front of the room and the door. Tsume grinned at him as she scooted backwards to the headboard, but her smile faltered as her gaze dropped down to his erection. It jutted upward and pointed towards her, almost as if drawn by a magnet. He twirled a finger. “On your hands and knees.”

Looking somewhat apprehensive ( _fearful_ his mind whispered, even though he knew it was impossible for her to feel fear), Tsume obeyed. He tried looking everywhere but her as he pulled her back a little towards him and bent forward. Damn – she disappeared right beneath him. Maybe if he focused on how Tsume was merely a petite woman, he could drag his mind away from her being so young. (Twelve years old, his mind whispered at him. You are about to rape a twelve year old girl. _For Konoha._ SHE’S **TWELVE** FUCKING YEARS OLD—)

Danzo slid his left hand beneath her, exploring. He was disturbed to find her wet and already moving her hips against him as he slid in a finger to gauge her depth. Not much room. He would tear her to shreds – why did she have to moan like that? He leaned his torso against her back, transferring the bulk of his weight to his knees to bring the supporting right hand to the base of his cock (tried very hard to not to think of how vulnerable his exposed back and buttocks were, with three angry kunoichi watching them). He dragged his hand up the length, ignoring the sparks of pleasure that flared along his spine, and then grasped it near the middle. If he didn’t move his hand from this position, minimized the length he would sink into her, maybe he wouldn’t hurt her as much. 

She reached one arm behind and slung it awkwardly around his neck. That dragged Danzo out of his thoughts as she pulled him downward and arched to kiss him. He jerked his head back, stung. _Too intimate._ He never kissed any mark on the lips – his stomach curdled. He didn’t kiss lovers, either. It was a good way to get poisoned. He ignored Tsume’s bewildered expression as he braced himself, and then slid into her. The bewildered expression became one of discomfort. He kept his right hand wrapped around himself and his left hand massaged her stretched vulva gently. He remained still despite his trembling knees, letting her adjust to his girth.

Tsume dropped her head for a moment, muttering curses too soft to distinguish. She fidgeted a little, unsure of whether she was supposed to move her hips towards the intrusion, or away. Danzo dropped his head too, rolling it over her shoulder until all he could see was her hair and her hands pressed into the mattress. His knees were already beginning to ache from the soft surface, and his lower back from the strain of his bent position. Then he rocked. Slowly and gently at first. He braced the palm of his left hand against her abdomen so his thrusts wouldn’t drive her into the mattress, and his middle and ring fingers pressed on either side of her clitoris out of habit, rubbing gentle circles. Desire clawed at his insides – all he wanted to do was pound her into the mattress, make her scream.

He shoved that thought into a box. _Don’t scream. Stop moaning!_ He didn’t know if that last thought was for him or for her. So he shoved it away too. He was usually good at compartmentalizing his needs and reactions.

Tsume reached up again and cupped his jaw with a hand. She turned her head slightly to watch him out of the corner of her eye. She deliberately dragged her hand slowly across his jaw, and then dropped it down. His eyes followed. As his hips moved harder against hers, as his left hand tweaked and played her clit, as pleasure threatened to overwhelm his rational mind and drown out the rising horror, he watched as her hand, carefully hidden just below where only his dropped head could see, began signing.

 _Three Iwa leaders. Confirmed bulk of supplies bought from agricultural community where soil rich and dark; travels perhaps twenty kilometers to base? Many sheep and cattle nearby. Over five thousand strong, armed with weapons made here. One thousand ronin, three thousand, six hundred ninja. Fourteen hundred unknown. One leader summons. Army base in deep valley with two different rivers, one lake, salmon-run, in Waterfall. Guarded by geese. Very close, live volcano._ Details after glorious details spun from her finger. More than any other kunoichi asking questions could possibly have obtained, short of being taken the enemy’s main camp by whomever she seduced.

Tsume’s fingers faltered as his thrusts increased in speed and strength. His hands slipped, sweaty, trying to grab at something – he found his right hand grasping one bony hip, vaguely wondering how it got there. Trembling, slowly, her own breath shuddering, she signed: _Is sex supposed to feel this good?_

His orgasm slammed so forcefully into him that colors flashed through his eyes. It ripped through him, alighting every nerve on fire, making it impossible to breathe past his pounding heart. He clawed at something – was it her? _Please don’t hurt._ He felt her insides quiver and she shrieked, curling into a ball with trembling limbs. _I broke her. Fuck I broke her_. He collapsed on the bed, half-attempting not to fall on top of her and mostly succeeding, and thinking, _breathe_.

They lay together on their sides, facing each other, for several breathless moments. His limbs felt weak although his fingers buzzed, and sleep lurked at the foggy edges of his mind. Tsume’s hair stuck to her sweaty skin and her eyes were glazed as she reached up and touched his lips. There was a look of wonder on her face. Danzo was too tired to slap her hand away. “That felt really nice,” she told him with a breathy whisper. She draped a thigh over one of his legs, and pressed against him.

Danzo felt hatred, disgust, and desire tearing at his soul.


	9. Alpha years - Chapter Six

He was unsure of exactly how he managed to extract himself from Tsume’s room and leave the Palace. Danzo knew it had to be hasty – he hoped it wasn’t suspiciously so. He thought, maybe, that he told Tsume he was too old and didn’t have the energy when she offered a second round with an alarming eagerness, hands exploring his body with far too much familiarity. He hadn’t been aroused when he left, but desire still sang through his body. He wanted to take her – mark her as his own with love bites everywhere, plow her willing body, spill his semen on her skin, shield her from the sight of anyone else, feed her, comfort her, give her all the soft pillows in the world. He knew he would never be able to control himself as well as he had the first time now that he had had the taste of this… this drug.

Danzo ignored the innkeeper who called out with a wink, “Have yerself a good time, yeah?” as he entered the inn and took the stairs two steps at a time to his room. He did everything he could not to move with unreasonable haste – everything that wouldn’t mark him as a shinobi. Once in his room, he crouched low in a corner, his back pressed against the wall, and subtly sensed for life around him. He didn’t perceive that he was followed – that meant no alarm had been arisen yet, or at least no one would move against him until dark. He saw dusk through the lone grimy window – he didn’t have to wait long before finding out.

The stench of sex, patchouli, and cinnamon was cloying in his nostrils. He snatched the one change of clothes from his bag and hurried into the bathroom. Light flickered from the naked bulb ahead as he twisted the tap water on. He hastily stripped his shirt, and then clawed bloody tracks on his arms to see if he couldn’t also strip off his skin. _You’ve done worse,_ a voice told him snidely. _Remember? Your cowardly hesitation allowed Senju Tobirama to die. You can never again hesitate to do what needs to be done for Konoha. You know perfectly well that there will always be those who will hesitate._

 _TWELVE YEARS OLD,_ another part of his mind screamed as he yanked his boots and socks off, then his pants. He fisted his hair and yanked, trying to pry open his head and force the voices out.

_See what it wrought?_ The first voice continued, becoming as dark as the stains on his soul. _At the small cost of one brain-injured little girl who was already undesired and undervalued by her clan, Konohagakure now has the information to crush her enemy and end this war once and for all._ _See?_

Oh, he saw. Beneath the stark, harsh, unforgiving light, blood smeared his limp penis and thighs.

He vomited into the filthy toilet as the second voice hammered at his brain. _TWELVE **FUCKING** YEARS OLD._

oOoOoOo

Danzo lurked in the alleyway, feeding scraps to a rather friendly dog that had left its post beside a reinforced oak door to greet him. He had been ready to kill – wanted to slate his hatred in someone’s flesh and blood – if anyone ambushed him in his rented room, but as the moon rose, hidden by the dark clouds of pollution that blanketed the city, no one came. He was completely unsuspicious; deemed unthreatening by whatever powers and forces kept watch in the Palace. Just a typical bandit availing himself to the offered services.

As he waited for the night to settle further, and the crowds to leave the Palace, his thoughts stabbed at him. He should be removing all thoughts from his head, preparing himself to breech the walls, but he had time to spare. So, as he petted the friendly dog – no doubt well-behaved and somewhat tame due to Tsume’s influence on wild beasts – Danzo worked through the splinters of his shattered feelings and beliefs. Better to do so now, lest they arrive unbidden during a battle. Focus was paramount, and he needed to find the center of calm that he had spent years cultivating.

It was always disturbing to look so harshly at one’s self, anyway. An alley reeking of urine and vomit, the air so cold it turned to fog the moment he exhaled, seemed as appropriate a place as any to study the filth that wrapped his soul.

_(“It will not be easy to sleep with her, Danzo-sama.”)_

On the contrary, it had been _very_ easy to sleep with Tsume. It had been one of the easiest things he had ever done, a split-decision choice made without any _real_ regard to consequences. Perhaps there would’ve been fewer regards right now if Tsume had been like a broken doll, unmoving and unresponsive, accepting the fate that was so cruelly forced upon her. But she didn’t. Perhaps it would’ve been easier if this was something he knew she had been groomed for this in the last few years, with proper training and expectations, and she was also a few years older.

But Tsume hadn’t, and she most certainly wasn’t.

Yet her spirit and spine were stronger than his. Shimura Danzo had been brought down low by nothing more than a slip of a child, and the realization left bitterness in his mouth. And he knew – looking back objectively at what he had done in the last twenty-four hours – he should’ve made different choices and never raped her. Just like he should’ve made different choices with the Second Hokage the night he was killed in the First Shinobi War.

No matter how willing Tsume had been, no matter how Konoha might train her children to be (merciful, _damn_ the Hokage, completely unprepared and blindsided) killers, she didn’t have the maturity or mental capacity to objectively agree to sex at such a young age, or at least to sex as a prostitute. He suspected that Tsume had to have been coerced and threatened into accepting the mission.

_(“You and I are both aware that there is nothing we wouldn’t do to make the mission succeed.”)_

And how well he had proven that. _All for Konoha_. He told himself that Konoha was more than the individual – even if Konoha _was_ filled to the brim with eager, full-of-life twelve year old girls who ought to be playing with their baby nephews and dogs, pranking teachers and students alike. Danzo has spent more than the last twenty-six years remaking his image after his cowardice of so long ago – to become a leader, instead of a spineless follower, to prove to himself and to those who died that he understood the value of Konoha above his own skin, as all good Hokages must.

 _(“Danzo-sama can always be trusted to do what needs to be done, no matter how… disturbing or difficult_.”)

Damn Orochimaru. Damn him to the deepest, filthiest pits of hell, where they would keep each other company for an eternity of misery. Danzo’s leadership was simple – he would never ask anyone to do what _he_ wasn’t willing to do; it therefore stood to reason that he had to be and do the best, if he expected likewise from others. It was successful too, because ANBU’s quality was second to none by his leadership and training. And even though the Hokage was the leader of ANBU, that all the captains answered to Sarutobi Hiruzen alone, Danzo always felt that ANBU was also his, because _he_ was directly involved in running it from the top to the bottom, and _he_ trained every new recruit. Hiruzen readily allowed the over-involvement because ANBU was a huge operation to run in conjunction with the rest of the village.

There had never been anything before that Danzo wasn’t willing to do for Konoha, and he had fully expected the same from those under his leadership. He had willfully raped other men and women before, whatever the mission required – but never anyone _so young_ , and _never_ when she was one of Konoha’s. He felt contaminated and vile and sick.

Could he send more twelve year old girls to experience Tsume’s fate? Would he willingly send Konoha’s jinchuuriki, just ten years old, into a brothel to be brutalized and raped continuously?

No. Damn Orochimaru.

Would he willingly send Kokoro, Tsume’s faceless but often named friend, who recently turned eleven years old, despite the fact that he would no doubt make very potent enemies of her four older sadistic brothers and never again be able to sleep with his eye closed or eat anything that didn’t first undergo rigorous taste-testing?

No. _Damn Orochimaru_.

Was Danzo willing to _become_ that twelve year old girl, sent into enemy territory without backup and with no hope or expectation of it ending, to be brutalized day after day? (What was he doing when _he_ was twelve, besides holding fiercely to the corner of his blanket while Hiruzen hogged the rest of it as they camped beside the Suna Salt Flats because Tobirama dragged them all over the fucking continent on a fucking whim and in a snit because of a fight with his lover?)

And _that_ , he knew, was a limitation he never thought he’d face. _For Konoha._

For what was Konoha, if not a place where a trio of Academy girls could innocently decorate the Hokage’s Tower with a thousand sloppy paper cranes, held in place with chewing gum? What was Konoha, if not a place where an oblivious ten year old could wander into the ANBU headquarters and face down weapons with a curious light in her eyes?

What was Konoha, if it willfully brutalized its own twelve year old child?

The First, he realized with a gut-wrenching chill, (kind and jovial and full of life) never would’ve raped Tsume. Nor would the Second (no matter how sadistic he had been to _Danzo_ ), or the Third (so congenial and always genuine, even towards the enemies on the battlefield). And for the first time in the forty years of their friendship, Danzo finally understood why Hiruzen was so soft, so weak, so… so passionate and filled with life and love for Konoha.

What had that bumbling idiot been _thinking_ when he approved of Tsume for this mission? With a chill, Danzo wondered if Hiruzen even knew.

_It is only the leaves that get to bathe in the light, to reach eagerly for the sun. The roots are forever in the dark, toiling deeper, sundering the earth and stealing nutrients from the soil, to do what’s needed so that the tree may live and thrive._

Fuck that. Fuck the roots – Danzo wasn’t like that. Fuck the leaves – Danzo certainly wasn’t like them, either. He was the silent, creeping fungal rot that hid within the tree, slowly but surely killing it. Fuck the leadership and fuck the Hokage. Danzo wasn’t worthy – didn’t deserve anything he had, because he was supposed to protect and defend Konoha from all enemies, external _and_ internal. 

He stood, pressed his back against the wall, and turned to face the Palace. All the nightly activity had died down and the support staff had finished their rounds of cleanup. It was just a few short hours before dawn; it was the best time to infiltrate.

_(“Because she is Black Ops, you will leave her there after obtaining information. She can remain as a mole and gather information for Konoha for years to come.”)_

And fuck you too, Orochimaru. Danzo wasn’t going to leave this comrade behind, no matter the greater good, and especially not for _years_ of _this_. (Somewhere in the distance, he was sure that Sakumo was overcome with a fit of hysterical laughter. May the White Fang choke to death on his own spittle!) Because if Danzo left Tsume behind, he would leave all principles behind, and that level of corruption could not allowed to abide within the walls of Konohagakure.

oOoOoOo

Despite Madame Haori employing a miniature army of kunoichi, they weren’t that good – not against _him_. Danzo had very little difficulty making short work of the sentries stationed outside, his mind riding the edges of Battle Mode, where nothing could touch him or disturb his focus. Not pain, fatigue, cold or heat, hunger, or thirst. His focus was as tight as his moniker implied – War Hawk. Simple sometimes really was the best way to handle matters – just a simple, quick twist of the neck, and the sentries were dead. No need to use fancy poison or flashy jutsu. Death came silently and swiftly to those who were in his way – those who were not, he ignored as he bypassed them, carefully crawling along the vaulted ceiling as he searched for Tsume. He couldn’t feel her chakra signature, but it would only be a matter of time. Besides, too many dead bodies tended to attract attention and raise alarms.

In many ways, Hidden Villages did as much damage to the ninja life as it protected. To be a ninja was to be silent and deadly, undetected to the last, unsuspecting even after the end. Shinobi, secure in their home turf of the Hidden Village, explored flashier and louder techniques that broadcasted their abilities to a world interested in paying for the use of said abilities. Danzo preferred the old, subtle and silent ways over the new, flashy and loud ways.

Naturally, Tsume found him first by coming to him, nose in the air and eyes wide with surprised delight. The moment he saw her, desire punched him out of his focus. That confirmed his suspicions that there was more at work with Tsume than what met the eye, as lust curled through his body and he felt arousal tightening into an early erection – usually only powerful genjutsu could successfully disturb his focus. He couldn’t decide if he was pleased that an external force was to blame for making him desire Tsume, or disgusted that he would fall for such a cheap trick. He redoubled his focus – pushed away the arousal the same way he pushed away hunger and fatigue. Pushing it away didn’t cancel it out, though, especially when he had never practiced pushing away arousal as he had hunger and fatigue. This was an oversight he would need to address at another time.

Tsume must have realized his return meant her rescue. She had dressed herself in multiple layers of knee-length yukatas and shirts to keep warm, and multiple socks on her feet. She apparently couldn’t find any shoes or cloak. After they studied each other for a moment, she raised a fist, and then signed. _Follow me._ He silently dropped from the ceiling and landed beside her. He kept one hand towards his weapons as she led him down the carpeted hallways, making multiple twists and turns and occasional backtracking. Not once did anyone see them, though they flitted close.

“They have dogs,” Tsume whispered as she reached a locked door leading outside. “None of the girls can get away with escaping, because they get tracked down and dragged back. I’ve already told the dogs not to follow me, when I first smelled you coming, but I want them to know they can’t follow you either.” She started to fiddle with the lock on the door, but Danzo impatiently broke it with an effortless snap of his wrist. She shrugged. “That works.” On the other side of the door was several kennels occupied by eight adult hounds, and four puppies approximately two months old. All of them stood at alert with watching eyes. Tsume approached each kennel, talking to them in a quiet voice. “It’s okay. He’s with me. I have to go, don’t follow. Remember, I’m the alpha, and I say don’t follow us. Go chase elsewhere.” One by one, Danzo watched as the hounds crouched at Tsume’s feet. He tried to keep his focus anywhere than on Tsume’s wagging hips and bare skin.

The back of the kennel was a yard where the dogs were allowed to run for exercise; the grass was trampled and the grounds filled with various holes. Tsume led Danzo to the gate at the other end. Instead of wasting time fiddling with the lock, he grabbed Tsume and hefted her up to straddle his back, the supply pack shoved to the side. The touch of her hand against his head to help keep her balance, the weight of her body and her scent – hell if he knew how to describe her scent, except that it was Tsume’s – invaded his senses. He braced one arm beneath her to prevent her from sliding off his back. Desire wanted him to run away with Tsume, away from all threats and all other distractions, so he could resume claiming her.

He could work with the running away part, and pushed it into his focus. One chakra-enhanced leap took them over the fence. He darted across the street and ran up the wall of the house in front of them. His pace didn’t slack as he ran along the slated rooftops, skirting smoke stacks and scaring sleeping flocks of pigeons.

“Hey.” A finger poked the back of his neck. “Your hand’s on my ass.”

“And it’s staying there to support your weight.”

“Okay.” Tsume was silent a moment as he took a large leap to cross the wide street below. When he landed on the rooftop across the way, she said, “Is the hand supposed to rub that way?”

He stilled the fingertips, and then curled his hand into a fist, silently cursing at the desire. At the end of the roofs, one giant bound sent them crashing into the guard post, and then an uncomfortable landing on the ground outside the wall surrounding the town. Splintered wood landed beside them. Danzo sprinted when shouts of surprise went up, and guards hurried to assess exactly what had happened. Danzo knew the guards wouldn’t be following after them – they were more concerned with persons breaking into the village, not out, but it would give Madame Haori a clue of which direction her escaped whore was heading. He instantly created three other Danzo-carrying-Tsume earth clones and sent them off in different directions; there was no way he would be able to hide his footsteps in the thick frost that blanketed the ground in silver, so it was best to create multiple trails.

Danzo headed for higher ground, veering off to the northeast, which would eventually take them to Grass. West would take them far too close to Earth’s Hidden Village – Iwa. Further north was already impassable with the snow. South would take them past the iron mines. But no matter where they went, there was little cover to be found in the surrounding alpine tundra – just mounds of bare boulders bleached white in the sun, stray patches of lodge pole and aspen, and occasional dipping fellfields and alpine meadows, both brown and dry since autumn came early this far north. Further north and west, where the mountains rose sharply, was snow. Dawn was starting – there was a lighting in the sky behind them – and they would be spotted easily, even from a distance, if they couldn’t be out of sight be the time daylight arrived. The frost wouldn’t disappear until the sun had melted it away, but that would take a few hours. But even when the frost finally melted, his footsteps would be clear in the frozen tundra.

“You know,” Tsume said, squirming deliciously against his back (down boy, down – TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD), “I don’t think I was supposed to be fetched, although I’m really glad you did. Orochimaru wanted me to stay there.”

“Fuck Orochimaru.”

“Well, gosh, if it makes him less angry about me not being left behind, I suppose I could.”

Danzo skidded to a stop behind a tall mound of boulders and shoved Tsume off like she burned him. Then he whirled around, hoisted her to her feet by the front of her many yukatas bunched in one fist, and knelt down in front of her so they could see eye to eye. “You are twelve fucking years old.”

She glared at him, looking every bit as indignant as he remembered whenever she perceived she was being insulted. “I can count, you know. I know enough of my numbers to do _that_.”

“You never should’ve been given this mission. You are too damn young for it.” Tsume’s mouth trembled as her eyes became shiny at that statement. As she clenched and unclenched her fists, he realized that she probably felt he was belittling her success. For being such a prideful and headstrong girl, Tsume took every little criticism to heart, even if the criticism wasn’t aimed at her.

Danzo threw an arm around her and pulled her close, pressing her face against his shoulder. He fought hard not to hump her at the same time. “You did good,” he whispered into her wild hair, secretly pleased that she washed it free of the cloying stenches of cinnamon and patchouli. “For no back up and no training, you did good. But you would’ve done just as good if you were disguised as the daughter of a merchant, and had to rent a room with said merchant right next to the Palace. The mission should’ve been tailored to your age and your talents. You should never have been jammed into it like a square peg forced into a round hole.” He ran his hands over her hips and distantly wished that they were more generous and rounded.

She sniffled a few times, and wiped her nose on his shirt. _Twelve years old._ “Shinobi Rule #8 – cloves and ham – a shinobi must never question their commander. I did what I was supposed to. And besides, _you_ had no problem fucking me.”

Danzo pushed her back. “No, I had no problem.” And that _was_ the problem. He stopped running his hands through her hair.

“You told me that once, you know.” Danzo indulged himself in sweeping a thumb across her cheek to wipe away moisture – her face was far away from her scrawny hips. “That, uh, that a person has to do whatever it takes for the mission. They have to kill, or lie, steal, cheat, and fuck whoever or whatever is required. Shinobi Rule #4 – Yuu’s old smelly socks – a shinobi must always put the mission first. So I did. Grandmother said, before she sold me, that I wasn’t wanted, and so I decided that I would have to make myself wanted. Because I am a kunoichi, and I have a purpose, even if I’m not wanted.” Suddenly angry, Tsume jabbed an accusing finger into his chest. “You took away my purpose, butthead!”

“Rules.” Danzo spat. “Damn the rules!” He leaned forward and froze, lips barely brushing her throat. He shoved her away and doubled over, pressing his face into the cold ground as arousal roared to the forefront of his focus. Thoughts of pressing her up against the boulder, draping her thighs over his shoulders, and exploring with lips and tongue tortured his mind. His mind flashed to memories of last night – he sunk his teeth into his wrist, trying to override pleasure with pain.

 _Now is a really bad time to learn I’m masochistic,_ he thought distantly when the pain only magnified the fires deep in his loins.

“Are you okay, Danzo?” Tsume whispered. He felt her hand touching his neck out of worry. He flinched away.

“Don’t. I want to fuck you. I shouldn’t want _anything_ , damn it!” _He_ told his body what to do and when to do it – he would _not_ be a slave to the petty functions of body or mind.

“Oh, that’s just the seal Orochimaru put on me.”

Danzo found a cold center in his mind as Tsume’s words echoed and ricocheted back and forth. _That’s just the seal that’s just the seal Orochimaru that’s just the seal Orochimaru Orochimaru the seal seal seal_ … He saw red. “Funny,” he whispered, lest his voice betray the depth of his rage. “He never mentioned any seal.” It seemed that Orochimaru hadn’t been forthcoming on _several_ important aspects of the Black Ops.

“He said that others would know, just by my chakra, that I was a kunoichi, and that would give me away with the Iwa shinobi. So he put the seal on me, and it converted the sense of my chakra into desire. He said that the stronger the shinobi, the more they desired me.”

That was good to know. It was also really, _really_ bad. That meant that the Iwa nin were going to want her back, for the simple fact that they desired her, and no one but they could have this favored whore. It was a wonder they hadn’t already burned down the Palace after stealing Tsume from Madame Haori’s and gangbanged her to death somewhere.

Danzo pulled his mind further into the cold center where he could feel bloodlust singing at the edge of his rage. Bloodlust felt good – like sexual arousal – but he could focus it better, could use it to engulf the sexual arousal so it no longer hindered him.

“Are you mad at me?”

Danzo slowly raised his head and looked hard at Tsume. Her gaze was without fear or caution, her stance unmoving in the face of his rage – he was sure the odor of such drenched his pores. “Not at you,” he whispered. He crooked his finger at her in a come-hither gesture. She hesitated only a heartbeat before she stepped close. After a moment of consideration, Danzo boldly ran one hand down her clothed body – over her budding chest, down her stomach, and then cupped her sex. She watched without reaction, no telltale shift of her face or body to indicate if she found this intrusion discomforting. How much of _that_ was training, and how much of that was just another side effect of her brain injury?

Danzo… _supposed_ he could see the form of a woman just on the cusp – a gentle slope at her hips and waist, a minimal curve at the breast. Superimposed over the form was his memory of a scrawny hedgehog weighed down with a newborn baby and a ridiculously large diaper bag.

He also wanted her like nothing else in life, to bury himself in her heat once more, to coat his body with her fluids, to captivate her attention so he was the sole focus and center of her world. “I am a dangerous, ugly, ruthless shinobi, and I pride myself on my control. Unfortunately, my control is going to be strained until I can remove your seal.” He had no idea _how_ – seals that were etched this deeply into one’s chakra were next to impossible to remove without crippling the person. “Here.” Danzo dragged his hand away and withdrew a kunai from a hidden pocket. “In Konoha, your team is your life. I have your back, and you have mine. But if I lose control and come at you, that is a betrayal. Stab me if I do so.” If he gave in to his desires – if he came at her in this blind lust that edged him towards madness, knowing all too well the depth of his own depravity even when he _wasn’t_ raping twelve year old girls… He didn’t know if she’d survive.

Tsume eyed the kunai doubtfully. “What good is _that_ going to do me when you’re already stronger and faster?”

He opened her hand and folded it over the hilt of the kunai. “A man has two heads,” he told her. “The one above his shoulders, and the one below his belt.” Her eyes flickered. “In my experience, men typically follow the head below their belt, and such men are vulnerable to this.” He tapped her forehead. “My strength and speed cannot be compared to your thinking, no matter how linear it is, because the head on your shoulders will always outwit a man’s miniature head.”

“You sure your head’s below the belt there? You’re bigger than any other guy I’ve ever seen.”

Danzo glared at her. “That is a completely inappropriate topic for discussion with a twelve year old, especially when we still have a lot of ground to cover. I won’t be able to look at the seal until at least tonight, and even then I won’t know for sure.” It was a good thing that his need to put distance between them and Tetsuzanshi was in agreement with his desire to (among other things) protect Tsume from danger. He gestured. “Climb back up on my back, now.” As long as he focused on the bloodlust, then he could get past this.

He hoped that Iwa nin followed him. He really wanted to bathe in the blood of his enemies. As he ran, they heard the echo of barking dogs, which faded away. Tsume giggled. “The dogs are taking them south-east. I knew it was worth the loss of my lunch every day to make friends with them.”

oOoOoOo

No enemies had found them by the time the sun set. Danzo found a steady running pace that he could maintain for days on end, even with a burden as slight as the one he carried on his back, and yet as heavy as the guilt churning in his gut. Their path would take them out of the way to Grass for at least a week if his impromptu plan went without a hitch, but there was nothing that could be done about that. His bloodlust slowly died down as the kilometers passed, as they skirted the mountain range but kept to the stretching alpine tundra. They passed several herders with their herds of sheep and llamas, but were unseen and undetected. They paused only for quick bathroom breaks, and Tsume’s dinner was a raw turnip. Danzo ate nothing and drank the water sparingly.

Tsume spent most of the run asleep and uncomfortably braced beside his pack. Danzo’s mind went into a half-there stage, where he could focus internally while his body reacted mechanically to his surroundings. It kept the focus away from Tsume, and the seal-induced desire, and the slack in arousal meant not having an uncomfortable run with an erection – not all the time, at least. Danzo recalled every scene with Orochimaru; every word that was said, every movement of body. He scrutinized all that he knew of this Ops – past attempts made by other kunoichi, Tsume’s death declaration several weeks ago (“ _killed on a mission while with her great-grandmother”,_ and the only thing that came to Danzo’s mind upon hearing the declaration was that Shinzou probably did the killing instead of an actual enemy), why she was chosen, the importance of her information – and didn’t like the slowly-forming realizations.

He turned his fear and horror elsewhere – he looked hard at himself, at his philosophy, and at emotions, like love, trust, loyalty, and lust. He compared his emotions with Tsume’s, and wondered if these things could ever truly serve a purpose in the life of a shinobi.

It was the bane of his life – emotions. You could tell the head (on one’s shoulder) all the truth and facts in the world, but the heart will always try to override and confuse. The heart was shortsighted in its interference, making a person react half-cocked at ideas and make stupid (deadly) mistakes. And the heart hurt, worse than any broken bone or damaged organ.

He had been a passionate man in his youth – and the passion had led him astray, into choices that he wouldn’t have made if he had only been calm and rational. And Konoha suffered for it, such as the loss of the Second Hokage. The same could be said for other decisions where the consequences demanded an expensive payment – he knew that Orochimaru chafed at the lack of success with past reconnaissance against Iwa, was impatient with the war. Between the wounded pride and the impatience, Orochimaru made a rash decision with Tsume. Logic dictated that Tsume could just as easily have sniffed out the information outside of the brothel, without ever having to be seen or noticed by the visiting Iwa nin.

Logic also dictated that it was completely unnecessary for Danzo to rape Tsume. Were it not for the seal influencing him beyond the normal parameters of his control, Danzo would’ve been able to strategize a new plan – one that would not have cost Tsume or him their dignity. He could’ve waited while she was outside the gate, feeding the stray dogs, and snatching her. It would’ve been completely unnecessary to spend money on her rendered services.

Ultimately, Danzo knew he was responsible for his own actions, but the seal was like a drug that burrowed its way into his mind, soul, and body. Even if he had pulled her through the gate and run, would he have stayed his lust once he had removed her from any semblance of civilization?

The most important question though, was this: Why did Orochimaru send him on this mission without any information on the seal, or Tsume’s identity?

The only answer Danzo could conclude, once he stopped for the night at a copse of barren aspen trees, was that Orochimaru wanted to Danzo to be publicly shamed, or killed on this mission.

Tsume was awake but silent as she slid off his back. “The light is waning,” Danzo said, crouching. He pointed at the ground. “Sit. Show me where the seal is at.” He tried ignoring his arousal as she sprawled in front of him and lifted her right leg to pull off at least eight socks. He had the sudden urge to lick every one of her wiggling toes as she stuck her foot in his face.

“Orochimaru said he put it on my big toe.”

Danzo’s visual inspection of her foot turned into a lengthy physical caress as he contemplated the purple toenail. Then he coaxed the seal to bloom with his chakra, calling it to unwind and show itself – it spread across her body. He traced the shining purple characters past her knee and up her thigh.

He stopped. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against her kneecap, trembling as the arousal throbbed. “Are you okay?” Tsume asked, sounding bewildered. “I don’t really remember any of the Iwa shinobi acting like this.”

“What do you remember?”

“It hurt a lot. And there was usually a lot of blood on me and the sheets, especially the first few times – I was just _drenched_. But Madame Haori had this really nifty old medic, Madame Kai, who always got me healed me up, right as rain.”

That was good. No – it was bad. Very bad. The thought of blood-stained sheets and hurting Tsume actually managed to bring the arousal down to a more tolerable level, now that his desire decided it wanted to wrap Tsume up in layers of silk and hide her from the rest of the world in the shelter of his arms, even if she liked being the center of attention in the forefront of the world – alphas always had the worst personality for being a kunoichi. Danzo resumed studying the seal. He sighed. “This goes up pretty far. I’m going to have to look under your clothes more.”

“That’s okay.” She sounded far too cheerful for the situation. “You’ve already seen me naked.”

Danzo gritted his teeth and clamped his eye shut. He took several deep breaths to bring his control back as he thought of last night, of her beneath him, squirming and moaning. “Please stop… _inferring_ to what we did. Every time you do, I think–” He thought of blood smearing his thighs and penis. _Twelve years old – TWELVE **FUCKING** YEARS OLD_.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Taking another deep breath, he pushed her onto her back and carefully peeled back the layers of clothes, including her pink underwear with silly little bows. She shivered in the chilly air, skin prickling and bumping. The seal’s purple characters spread across her pelvis and abdomen (which he dearly wanted to kiss and caress), ends curling just above breasts that tightened and looked more mature in the chilly air. Danzo didn’t like the story that the characters told… He yanked his hands from where they had been kneading her breasts. He dropped her clothes back in place and scooted back, head dropping to his hands. He grabbed handfuls of hair and _pulled_. “Fuck. Fuck. I can’t think – there’s no on or off switch. Fuck.” He heard the rustle of her clothes. “Stay back!”

Tsume froze, her breath hitching. Danzo rose unsteadily to his feet. “Stay there,” he told her. “I’m – I’m going over _there_ , and taking care of this damn problem so it’s out of my way and I can think, and _you_ are going to stay here, and let me know if anyone comes close.” He stumbled off to the end of the copse, sinking down behind a broad tree trunk where she couldn’t see him.

Danzo couldn’t believe he was actually giving in to the demands of his body. Sex was not a basic function of life. If it were sleep, food, even shelter, he could eventually forgive himself of his temporary physical weakness. But Danzo always thought a man never died if he couldn’t get an orgasm – until this moment, at least. Deeply resentful that his hand was being forced (and even more resentful with the puns his mind kept devising), Danzo unzipped his fly and pulled himself free. Desire and arousal sang inside of him, the thought of Tsume less than ten meters from him – he slammed a wall up to that line of thought. Then he tried to think of nothing as he wrapped a dry right hand around the shaft and pumped vigorously.

_Ah man. I fucking hate friction burns._

_I deserve worse._

He tightened his grip as his right hand slid up and down, and then rubbed the head with his left hand. The stimulation was more painful than pleasurable, but he could feel the orgasm building much quicker now. His short pants left clouds of fog drifting in his blurring vision. He remembered Tsume leaning before him, the feel of her tongue – another mental wall slammed upward.

He cast his mind back to his first sexual experience with another person. He was fifteen and bathing in a creek with one of his teammates, Akamichi Torifu. Torifu had asked him if he were a grow-er or a show-er. Danzo hadn’t understood the question until Torifu reached between his own legs and demonstrated. Which then led to Torifu reaching between Danzo’s legs despite it being clear by then what Danzo was, with a hand that was deft and sure, followed by a willing mouth and an eagerness to please that more than made up for the fumbling lack of experience. Much like how Tsume reached and kissed and–

Fuck. His climax was stalling, despite just being within his reach. Danzo gripped his knee with his left hand and eased up some of the pressure as he stroked with his right. Perhaps a gentle touch would bring him over the edge. He thought of the first time he ever had sex with a woman. He couldn’t remember her name, but she had been a blonde Kumo kunoichi sent to seduce information out of him. He had been seventeen, and curious enough to be seduced by her perky breasts and velvety folds, so different from the jutting planes of Torifu’s body, so much more like Natsumi’s – and that foreign kunoichi was never successful, since he strangled her violently during copulation, watching her face grow blue and her tongue bloated as he pumped his hips against her thrashing pelvis. It was also the first time in his life that lust rode the edges of bloodlust, and his orgasm amidst the kunoichi’s death throes had been magnificent and incomparable to anything else… except for last night, when he slid into the hot, sweet core of a willing twelve year old—

“Fuck!” Danzo slammed the back of his head against the tree trunk. Stars burst and faded like fireworks through his vision, but his cock remained hard and the pleasure stunted. He felt blood trickle down the back of his neck. He viciously imagined tearing Orochimaru’s head off, and then ramming his cock down the bloody stump of a throat – no, no, the thought of sliding into a warm, wet orifice didn’t help the arousal. (He actually thought that Orochimaru was attractive, a strange androgynous mix of masculine and feminine, but had never before allowed himself to fantasize what it would be like to seduce his old teammate’s student…)

“You sure you don’t need a hand—hey!”

Danzo was on Tsume in a flash, pinning her to the ground with her hands forced above her head, her face pressed against his shoulder and his hips sliding against hers. “Don’t move,” he whispered as she struggled beneath him. _Please move_. _Yes, like that._ “Stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”

She glared at him. “You know,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt, her finger wagging at him from where he had them clenched in his, “I do sort of have experience in this, and it _is_ my fault. I should help.”

“It is _not_ your fault.”

“But the seal—”

“Does not make it your fault!” He forced his body to relax, to release her hands and sit upright. He supposed he should be dismayed with the way his cock jutted upward, far too hard and high for a man of his age, really. _Down, boy._

“Maybe if I just touched?” Tsume’s expression looked stricken. Her clothes were bunched up around her knees, and he could see the scrolling purple seal, still blooming on her leg. Her expression wasn’t sexy, but her body was so warm and so soft. “You say it’s the seal’s fault and not mine, but the seal is part and partial to me. It’s like saying it’s not my fault that Kuromaru chewed up the rug, except that it really is because he’s my responsibility. And you can’t help me like _this_ , so let me help you so you can help me.”

Ah, to have the simple linear thinking of Inuzuka Tsume. It didn’t get one trapped and entangled like the thinking of a spiral leaf. “I will not hurt you again. Not like last night.” He didn’t want any more bloody smears on his body. He didn’t want to think of how she probably looked, with blood dribbling from the apex of her thighs and purple bruises blooming across her labia.

Tsume’s knees gently clamped together. “Well, yeah. That’s why I offered a hand, not my _vagina_. I’m all right now, because I get patched up each time I service someone. Besides…” Her bare toes curled. She looked a bit shy. He tried very hard not to think of how many more men had raped Tsume after he had had his way with her. Of how many men raped her in those months before he had his way with her. “Besides, I didn’t think sex was supposed to feel good for us younger girls. You were the only one who ever made it feel _good_.”

Danzo was on her again, once again sliding his body against hers as he bunched her yukatas up around her armpits. “Shh. Shh. Don’t… don’t say things like that, in the future.” He found her words less reassuring and more horrifying. He caressed her face and rolled her about so that she was tucked close to his side, facing him. He gyrated against her closed thighs, the head of his cock brushing her bare pelvis. “Maybe, if there’s _just_ a hand.” The arousal and desire was making him desperate; shame whispered at the edges of his mind. If he could just _think_ – and then he felt her stroking his erection, her hand caught between their bodies. Lightning zipped through his spine. Danzo’s hips jerked as her grip tightened and her strokes slid the entire length of his shaft, up and down, fingers tightly pressing beneath the head before easing down once again. The last slide up – the tiniest scrape of her claws against his sensitive flesh – brought the world crashing around his head. Fire flashed through his body and pleasure seared his nerves. The moment lasted for minutes – hours? – time stopped still.

He panted against her hair, feeling spent and boneless and hazy with pleasure. Then he sat upright. “Don’t move,” he told her again. He carefully rolled Tsume flat on her back, clothes still shoved up by her armpits, leaving her bare before his eye. His semen had splashed onto her body, and he carefully pooled the tacky substance together. “I don’t have any chakra ink, but this will do as a temporary replacement.” Blood, charcoal, water – they held life _._ So did semen – the most potent source of life, outside of blood. He swept a hand across the back of his head, coating his fingers with blood from where he had slammed it into the tree. He mixed the blood, semen, and the dark flow of his chakra together until the mixture glimmered an ugly rust-red under the moonlight. Then he drew added characters to the end of the trailing seal across her abdomen, sliding them down her pelvis, and finishing them as he traced the crease where thigh met hip. She arched against him and moaned as the seal flipped off. Desire immediately left him – the slow trail of arousal still floated through his hazy mind and blood vessels, weighing down his limbs.

It was tolerable though, and he was exhausted. He drew away from her and tucked himself back into his pants. He gently pulled all her clothes back into place, including her socks and panties (after finding and fetching them from across the copse). Then he pulled his blanket from his pack, Tsume into his arms, and wrapped them in the blanket. “May as well share body heat,” he murmured against her ridiculous hedgehog hair.

He felt her curl up against him. Her feet were cold, even though eight layers of socks. “Why not?” she asked with a yawn and a wiggle that was suspiciously similar to snuggling. “We’ve already shared body fluids.”

“I’d tell you to put a sock in it, but you need them for your feet.”

“How ‘bout I just keep my nose open?”

“That’ll do…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I truly find Danzo to be one of the most fascinating and complex characters in canon. Kishimoto gave us flashbacks of Danzo of when he was seven years old, and then as a young man with Tobirama's death, and it really highlights how far into the depths of depravity the man descended, the older he got. I've tried to figure out where Danzo's protectiveness towards Konoha took such a warped, desperate path, and highlight some of that in this chapter. And because this Danzo doesn't reach his canon counterpart's level of depravity, there had to be something so traumatizing that it actually makes him into a better man.
> 
> I mean, he's still very much flawed and very much cruel, choosing to make brutal sacrifices, and forcing others to make brutal sacrifices, instead of thinking up plans that require a lot less bloodshed. He is just not a man who understands the generosity of a kind human spirit.


	10. Alpha years - Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let us hearken back to the article I quoted in regards to how strong a dog's sense of smell is. In canon, Hatake Kakashi is said to have a nose 1000x stronger than a ninken's. If we understood that in light of the scientist explaining that a dog is able to see from three thousand miles what a human being can see from a third of a mile, then Kakashi could track the entirety of the continent. Therefore, Tsume's oflaction, in this story and based on the scale established by the scientists and Kishomoto himself, is actually weaker than Kakashi's's canon oflaction. However, oflaction has been so greatly underplayed in canon (until it came time for Kiba to be tracking down Team Taka), that the descriptions I've created on Tsume's skills will just have to stand. In some ways, I have written 300k words just to highlight why having the oflaction of a dog is an amazing ninja skill.
> 
> Now, in this story, is Kakashi's oflaction still insanely powerful? Yes, yes, it is. When you look at the statistics and data of Kakashi as a shinobi - good grief, he was a fully graduated genin at the age of five, and a chuunin by the age of six - his skill level, natural talent, and intelligence are abnormally strong, and I try to highlight that randomly, between Kakashi using his own chakra to create a henge when he's not even a week old, to tree-walking before most toddlers can string a coherent sentence together. But in the great grand scheme of things, oflaction is so invisible compared to his other skills that it's not even registering as a blip on other people's radars.

Dawn came far too early for Danzo. He kept his body still while letting his senses roam. He was able to pick out some ground squirrels and a fox, but no other moving life in the general vicinity. Tsume was still curled up against him, asleep. His body ached from lying in one spot on the hard, uneven ground, which he expected. Other long-time muscle knots had relaxed away from last night’s orgasm, but he had no intention of indulging again, whether due to necessity or leisure.

And most certainly _not_ with Tsume. Danzo concentrated his senses on her, and was pleased to note that he didn’t feel any desire. (What did he want out of sex? He wanted to find the largest, hairiest man willing to be on the receiving end of a hard fuck in a back alley behind some random bar, and obliterate the entire memory of an eager preteen girl.)

What he felt now… well, he could live with the shame and guilt better than the desire. He’d been living with such ever since the Second was killed. It seemed that his impromptu add-on to Orochimaru’s original seal was still holding up, but it wouldn’t last much longer than another day. He didn’t have the ingredients to make chakra ink for sealing, so he was going to have to continue the slapdash patchwork modification until he was able to obtain the necessary ingredients for a more permanent solution. Next time, he’d had to use more blood to make up for the loss of semen.

The strong wind was gusting from the east when he nudged Tsume awake. She grumbled and curled up tighter in a ball, and then squeaked when he yanked the blanket from beneath her. “We have to get moving,” he told her, tucking the blanket into his pack. “Take a sniff – is anyone chasing us or anyone around?”

Danzo watched as she closed her eyes in concentration and lifted her nose in the air. Then she frowned, eyes still closed, moving her head east, and then west for several long moments. “No one’s behind us, I think. It’s hard to tell when we’re upwind, but I don’t _think_ I can smell anyone coming. I think they’re concentrating on the mines.” He certainly hoped that they would – many of the mines south of Tetsuzanshi were abandoned, which made them ideal hiding locations for bandits like he had pretended to be.

“Are you positive?”

Tsume glanced to the west, where they had come from, but spent more time turning her nose to the east. “Well, not really. I mean, I can smell the town from here, no problem…” She pointedly wrapped her arms around herself and shivered from the cold wind.

_Here_ in the copse was at least forty kilometers away from the town. How much easier would it have been just to drag Tsume hither and yon all over Grass with her nose in the air until they actually found the enemy forces, instead of going through this damn farce?

“…but if they sent out a really small search party, like three or four people, I don’t think I’d know until they were closer, unless the wind dies down, or I try harder.”

Danzo studied her as a chill settled in his stomach. Now was probably not the time or place to be asking questions (especially when she kept glancing worriedly to the east), but the suspicion was going to nag at his thoughts and concentration if he didn’t find out. Besides, strategies were best made knowing the tools one had at hand. So far, he knew he was working with a literally fearless twelve year old genin who had memory issues and a very distracting seal. The odds of survival didn’t bode well in their favor. “As far as ratios go, what’s the sense of smell of the Inuzuka ninken compared to the average human?” He knew the answer already based upon past questions and experiences working with the Inuzuka women (and their unclaimed sons) in ANBU. Oyubi was always much more precise than anyone else he had ever worked with, and he hoped that she had tried working with Tsume.

Tsume wiggled her feet. “Gosh. Well, we breed the dogs to maximize stamina and scent receptors, so I think… Stupid numbers. Humans have an average of five million? Aunt Natsumi said that our dogs have a sense of smell that’s about one hundred times better than humans. Or is it a thousand? Anyway,” she waved her hand, “Dogs have about five hundred million receptors, which is, like, way more than five million.”

Now to establish her baseline. “How much greater sense of smell do _you_ normally have over your dogs?”

Tsume frowned and pursed her mouth in a grimace. “Dunno. Never really thought about it. For what I can normally do? Gosh. I asked Nagumi once – that’s Kuromaru’s mom – and she said it was like twenty times hers, at worst. And she’s got a _really_ good nose.”

He knew that the clan’s sense of smell was generally half that of their dogs, but they could readily increase it with chakra enhancement – a hundred times greater than the ninken was the best he’d ever been able to have any Inuzuka who wasn’t the current Clan Head own up to – and they did so enjoy their bragging – but it was something they could only handle for short periods of time. _(“Have you ever tried staring into the sun for hours without blinking? Magnify the sun until it’s the only thing in your vision, and stare endlessly into it, and that’s what it feels like to us when our olfaction is fully enhanced, Captain, except it’s a thousand different suns all at once, and you don’t know which sun is casting which blinding light.”)._

On a normal day, Tsume’s minimum normal sense of smell was _one billion times_ greater than a normal human being. Danzo’s mind whirled at the magnitude. “By how much can you enhance it? What’s the most you can do?”

“Uh. A lot? You mean like in actual numbers?” Tsume scratched her head and thought. “Well, I dunno.”

“A hundred times that of a ninken’s?”

Tsume pressed a finger against her chin and rocked back and forth. “I think that’s what Cousin Oyubi can do when she’s tracking. So, _definitely_ more than that,” she said decisively. “Aunt Bashira made me have a contest with Oyubi after she joined the ANBU, and I could smell way more than she could.” Her eyes kept flickering east with an expression of worry. Danzo knew that the cause of her distraction would be the next thing he addressed.

“Two hundred times?”

Tsume’s answer was confident. “More.”

His horror was growing in leaps and bounds. His voice squeaked in a way that hadn’t been possible after puberty thirty years ago. “… _five_ hundred times?”

Tsume’s rocking stopped. He could see her toes flexing as she gave the math some strong consideration. “More.”

In this stupidly fearless little simpleton were the secrets of _everyone_ in the entire village, and _she had no idea_. The First had been wise in seeking out the Inuzuka clan and talking them into joining Konoha – perhaps wiser than joining forces with the Uchiha and Hyuuga – at least the Inuzuka clan was as notorious with their loyalty as they were their sense of smell and lack of clothing. Well, minus that one incident when Tsume was born, but Shinzou had never strayed from her clan treaty and never made any active attempt to harm Konoha when that happened.

“How could you know if you can’t understand how to actually measure your sensitivity?”

The expression she gave him was flat. “Because I’ve got the best nose – even Grandmother admitted it, and she would never say anything nice about me! Grandmother and Aunt Natsumi and Tsunade-hime and others always said that the reason I nearly died in the Nara forest, the reason why my brain turned to mush, is because I pushed the limits of my senses, and it caused so much internal pressure that everything bled, or clotted, which caused organ failure and other stuff like that. It’s very complicated, I guess. Yuu-san said that’s not true, that someone shredded my brains instead, and Grandmother said she never told me… _whose_ limits I pushed, but still… I don’t remember much of that day – don’t even remember going into the forest. But I do remember smelling salt and snow in Wind. Everyone told me that was impossible, that I had to be smelling salt from the sea from the east _and_ Wind to the west _and_ snow from the north, but not all in the same place. But I know what I smelled. There _was_ a lot of salt, and there was a lot of snow, and it was in the same damn place in Wind. And it was pink. Don’t ask me why I knew the salt was pink. The nose knows what it knows, okay.”

Wind’s far western border was a tall mountain range known as the Suna Salt Range due to its high levels of rock salt. The Suna Salt Range was not unknown, but it was uncommon to hear about it because Konoha rarely had the need to go that far into Wind’s territory. Danzo knew the existence of mountain range only because he had seen it once, decades earlier in his youth while traveling with Squad Tobirama during a three-month long A-class tracking mission – a brief falling out with Natsumi that led Tobirama on a fucking _soul-search_ – that took them _all_ over Wind. They had discovered salt flats at the bottom of a valley. They were camping beside it when a snow storm came through, and in the morning, the flats had become a lake of salty water, its salinity too high to freeze despite the frigid cold. And since he had lost the rock-paper-scissors and was forced to share his blanket with Hiruzen that night, Danzo sometimes wondered where he’d be if he had attempted to drown the future Third Hokage in the salt lake.

It was not only more than two fucking _thousand_ kilometers away from Konoha, but the salt had been as pink as a summer sunset.

_Damn Orochimaru._

“I don’t know the exact strength of my nose, really. But I was told never ever to push the limits again, that I was lucky to survive what I did with what little brain I’ve got remaining. And the brain is an important organ, you know, so I’m trying to keep what I’ve got left. Um…” Tsume nervously tugged at his sleeve. “I know this sounds really weird, but I can smell Uzumaki Kushina-chan with some Kumo nin, way over there.” She pointed east.

He felt his heart thud as his mind flew off in two different directions. _How did Sakumo manage to lose our jinchuuriki?_ “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I’m really sorry I can’t do better with the village we came from, but the wind is coming from Kushina-chan’s direction, and it’s faint, but I know what I smell.”

“Can you smell any other Konoha nin?”

“No, sir. I don’t think there’s really a pursuit, and she doesn’t smell like she’s hurt, I think. It’s very far away though, and Kushina-chan’s scent is…unique?”

He was unable to keep the wry tone from his voice, despite the thrum of worry and the rapid flurry of thoughts and suspicions. “I thought we all were.”

Tsume blushed and ducked her head, looking shy and somewhat embarrassed. She wouldn’t blush when faced with a man’s erection, but she blushed at the thought of Kushina’s unique scent. Curious. “Well, yeah, but… but she’s different. Kushina-chan is Kushina-chan, you know? She’s the Red Hot Habanero. She’s… I don’t know. She’s different. Oh!” Her expression became one of absolute worry. “But what about the information I have, about Iwa? We have to go away from Konoha’s Grass camp to save Kushina-chan! Do you have a summon or something we could send to Orochimaru?”

“No, I don’t have a summon. Summons are not something that are readily handed out left and right to shinobi.” How well he knew precisely how different Kushina was. He was one of the privileged few in Konoha that the Hokage had informed of Uzumaki Kushina’s status. He didn’t know if jinchuuriki had a unique scent given what they hosted, and whether Tsume was detecting that difference without being aware of it, or if it was because Kushina was one of her few friends. (He made a mental note to ask Oyubi about Kushina’s scent at his next opportunity.) But how could Kushina have been successfully separated from her sensei, unless _that_ idiot was dead or incapacitated? Which meant the fate of Kokoro was equally uncertain. “How sensitive is your nose to be catching Uzumaki’s scent? Would you say you’re about five hundred times a ninken _right now_?”

She crossed her eyes in thought. “No, not nearly that.”

“Let’s think of this in percentages.” Danzo knew they didn’t have time for him to be walking Tsume through a process that her clan should have already established when she first entered the Academy. The last thing they needed was Konoha’s jinchuuriki in the hands of Kumogakure. He could just imagine the level of destruction and mayhem if the nine-tailed beast was used against Konoha. But a small part of Danzo wryly pointed out that Uzumaki Kushina was probably a week’s travel away, so a delay of a few minutes would hardly make a difference, but knowing the tools at his disposal _would_. “Where your nose normally is – that would be zero percent. The point where you… would be pushing the limits, that’s one hundred percent. Understand?”

Tsume pressed a finger with uncertainty to her lips. “Yes? Yes, I think so.”

He held up his hands – ten fingers. “As you increase the chakra at your nose, you increase your sensitivity. The point of pushing your limits is where you’ve increased your chakra to one hundred percent. Theoretically, if you halve that chakra, it would make your sense of smell half of your hundred percent. For the purpose of this exercise and for future references, half of your chakra is fifty percent of your sensitivity.” He closed one hand into a fist, leaving the other hand open and unwavering.

“Yes?” she said, probably because she wanted him to know she was still following.

“Do you know what your one hundred percent is?”

“No. I’ve never tried pushing it again. I was told never to go past the point where the world spins and spins, so I’ve never really tried boosting my sensitivity that much.”

“Do it right now.”

Tsume frowned and glanced towards the east. “Why? What about Kushina-chan? Shouldn’t we be leaving for her?”

“I’m establishing a baseline. If I can calculate the sensitivity of your olfaction by using known set geographical points, based upon established percentages of the chakra you’re directing to your nose, I can roughly estimate the distance between us.” As she blinked in confusion, Danzo sighed and translated. “I’m trying to figure out how strong your nose is so I can tell exactly how far away Kushina is.”

“Oh, okay! So, uh, what should I be smelling?”

“Bring your sensitivity down to where you normally have it.”

“All right. It’s done.”

“Can you still smell the village we left?”

“…No? The wind is too strong.”

“If there was no wind, could you smell Tetsuzanshi?” As Danzo talked and instructed Tsume, he stripped bark from several of the trees with his kunai, and reshaped the strips to Tsume’s feet. He ignored the hunger in his stomach and the dryness in his mouth. He could hear the fox rustling in bushes as it moved, ignoring them once it decided they weren’t a danger.

“Yeah. I could last night before the wind started.”

“How well could you smell it?” That was the difficult part – words like “faint” or “strong” were subjective and impossible to measure.

“Sort of okay, I guess.” Hopefully the subjective would become more objective with time and experience.

“Could you smell individual people or places?”

“If I know them – I could smell Madame Haori and some of the staff readily enough, because I was looking for their scents. She’s really pissed off, too, by the way.”

“Could you smell enough to know its approximate size?”

“Before I saw it when Grandmother sold me there, I could smell Tetsuzanshi had to have at least five thousand people. But all those smelts and the burning coal smudges everything up, because they’re strong and overwhelming, so it was a little hard to get smaller scents. Like, I smell all of that really easily, right now even with the wind blowing, and I _know_ where the smelts are, but smelling the village itself beyond the smelts is harder from here.” Danzo forcefully stamped down his anger at the thought of a supposedly loyal Konoha kunoichi selling her own granddaughter into sex slavery.. “It’s like trying to read a book that’s covered up with a thick comforter. You can see the shape of the book, but the words are really hard. What? Am I doing this wrong?”

“No. A thought – different thought – occurred to me. Did anyone in your clan ever work with you on your nose?” Danzo yanked her socks off, and slid the shaped wooden strips in between the bottom layers. It would work now for shoes, until he was able to procure a sturdy pair at some point.

“My sister did, before the accident. Nagumi tried before Kakashi was born, when Kuromaru and I were first partnered, but ninken aren’t any better at math than I am. Aunt Natsumi never stopped trying, but she can’t smell anything anymore, and it’s really frustrating for her. Aunt Bashira used to, until Grandmother squashed that, so Oyubi does it on the sly.”

He waved a hand impatiently. “Never mind then. So with a percentage of zero – your normal, everyday baseline – you can smell the village faintly from a distance of forty kilometers without contending with wind.” He would work with her later in Konoha to establish what, within the confines of zero, her nose could detect, when coal-powered iron smelts weren’t involved. “Now, increase the chakra in your nose to one hundred percent – push it all the way to your limits, to where the world spins – but does _not_ hurt – and then drop just below that so the world isn’t spinning.”

“Okay.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, and then shuddered. “Oh. Wow.” She peeked one watery eye open for a moment, looked at him, and then shut it. “The world isn’t spinning, but it’s really… wow.”

“This will henceforth be your maximum of one hundred percent.” He braced himself. “Can you smell Konoha from here?”

She whimpered and rocked, shoulders tense and hands tightened into fists. “Yes.”

(“ _Have you ever tried staring into the sun for hours without blinking?”)_

“You’re in pain. Drop it back down now to zero.” After he saw the tension in her shoulders leave and the rocking stopped, he said, “If I have our position and the map in my head correct, Konoha would be approximately eight hundred kilometers southwest of us. Could you smell any individuals in Konoha?”

“Yeah. I could smell the Hokage smoking. And he was drinking oolong tea with two cubes of sugar and a bit of cream, and also he was eating a banana with some ink-stained sugar sprinkled on it, and he’ll probably get a rumbly tummy because the banana was still really green. I know mine does. And he was talking to three Uchihas, including Fugaku and his father – I guess the police were having a meeting with the Hokage. Fugaku and his father didn’t have breakfast, but the other – I don’t know his name, but he’s just a cousin – did of left-over fried rice and milk, no tea. Uh, eight hundred kilometers sounds really, really far away.”

Danzo bitterly realized all Orochimaru had to do to get the information he wanted was prop Tsume on a hillside in Grass with the wind blowing slightly towards her, with her olfaction at one hundred percent for a few moments. _I will kill him slowly. And strong words will be had with Inuzuka Shinzou for her failure in measuring Tsume’s abilities._ All of that gone to waste in a fucking brothel. Knowing what her olfaction might be like was even more shocking that that damn seal. He had no idea how to calculate such a level of sensitivity compared to the average ninken. _Would her maximum be that of a thousand times a ninken’s, to smell the Hokage’s breakfast of ink-stained sugar from over eight hundred kilometers away?_

 _Fuck it all – **two** thousand? _“Now—”

“Oh, and also there’s four male Iwa shinobi on our trail from Tetsuzanshi. They’re at the rocks where I said I’d fuck Orochimaru if I have to.”

His mind immediately switched tracks. “We’re leaving. Now.” He handed her a handful of dried meat from his pack before hefting her to her feet. “We need to go get your little friend.”

“Mmmmm! That’s right!” she said as she stuffed the meat into her mouth. “Sakumo-senpai said that those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash.” Then she gasped and nearly choked. “But what about the information we have that Orochimaru wanted?”

Personally, Danzo thought that those who abandoned _Konoha_ were worse than trash. And to let Konoha’s jinchuuriki fall into enemy hands was even worse than abandoning Konoha – _that_ would qualify as active treason to destroy Konoha, as far as he was concerned. “Konoha has waited for two years to take care of Iwa. A few extra weeks won’t matter at this point. Get on my back, now.”

“Um.” Tsume’s cheeks, puffed up from where she had stuffed the meat, burned red as she shyly poked two fingers together. “Do we have time for me to pee?”

That was… reasonable, he supposed. He couldn’t have her say in the middle of their run, “I have to go now!” Much less announce that in a _fight_ if they were caught. He lifted a hand and pointed. “Make it fast.”

Chewing rapidly with her mouth open, Tsume ducked into the bushes – her movement startled the fox, making it sprint across the copse. There was a long pause. “Can you step away, Danzo? My bladder is shy.”

Danzo rubbed the bridge of his nose as he turned his back and walked in the opposite direction, bare branches dusted with frost dragging at his clothes. “I am _shocked_ that you even have a bone in your body that’s shy, much less an organ.” Let alone a polite bone or organ – it was the first time she’d referred to him by his actual name since they escaped, and she did it with a familiar casualness that shouldn’t be acceptable between twelve year old subordinates and their forty-five year old superiors. Granted, he supposed she had more right to her familiar casualness than most other people, since he hadn’t been sexually intimate with anyone in Konoha since Torifu was KIA eight years ago. (Really, the only people who called him Danzo these days were his old remaining teammates and the Sannin. And Sakumo, who didn’t count, because Sakumo was a subordinate who had absolutely _no respect_ for other people’s personal spaces. Small wonder then that Hatake Sakumo got along so well with the Inuzuka sisters.)

“Oh, my vagina’s quite open – usually for business, as Madame Haori told me once – but I’ve never had to piss with a guy around, before. Sorry.”

He quickly attended his own ablutions in private before joining her once more. Tsume was shifting her multiple layers around, trying to find some way of creating pockets in which to stick her cold hands. He yanked the bottom pair of socks off her feet to act as gloves, and then told her to mount up.

“This would be more comfortable if I wore the pack,” Tsume said without moving. He rolled it off his shoulders and shoved it against her.

“Fine. Now get on.” She obeyed after making sure the pack was secure on her own back, still chewing on the dried meat. He made another bunshin duo and sent them scampering south, as if heading for Grass. He turned east, towards Lightning. He wanted to fight – wanted to kill something – but a battle would be too much of a delay with rescuing Konoha’s jinchuuriki.

“Those shinobi following us – I know two of them.” Danzo heard the reluctance in Tsume’s voice. If he wasn’t absolutely assured that Tsume was utterly incapable of feeling fear, he would’ve thought she sounded fearful.

“They hurt you.” But he knew better. Reluctance wasn’t the same as fear.

She squirmed on his back, almost as if trying to distance herself. He felt the muscles in her legs flexing – undoubtedly she was wiggling her toes again. “Well, you were the only one who didn’t.”

An image – stark beneath the glow of the naked light bulb, blood smearing his thighs and penis – flashed through his mind as a voice hammered at his soul. _TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD._ “I also hurt you.”

“Then why did it feel good with you? Some of the older women would talk about the orgasms they’d have from generous customers, but most of the girls thought they were lying, because we never had fun. I knew that the women weren’t though, because orgasms pump out this huge wave of pheromones. I like the women’s pheromones better than the men’s.”

He… really should _not_ be having this conversation with her. But if he didn’t, then who would? “I’m experienced with pleasuring women in bed. It’s a necessity for certain reconnaissance and infiltration missions.” The thought that he had given Tsume her first… blood smearing his body – TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD – well, there went another piece of his soul, shriveling into ash. He didn’t need it anyway.

“Oh! So you were a whore, too! Why are you angry – oh. Uh, sorry for calling you a whore.”

He forced himself to calm down. He had met a few kunoichi who had become chuunin and jounin at very young ages. Of those who had taken similar reconnaissance and infiltration missions to his when they were significantly young – thirteen was the youngest he could remember – they had unhealthy ideas of sex. And they had only seduced a few men, let alone become a darling of a brothel. Not that his ideas of sex were any healthier, since he viewed it only as another weapon in his arsenal, to be used as required in missions and against the enemies of Konoha. Battle rape was still a brutal psychological weapon.

“Conversation over. I have to concentrate on putting distance between us and the Iwa shinobi.”

oOoOoOo

“Okay,” Tsume began, after an hour of awkward silence, “the Iwa nin split. The two that hurt me are following our trail, and the other two are following the decoy’s trail.” The first hour they traveled had been spent with him focusing again on her sense of smell and running her through various exercises to help train her understanding of distance and age of scent. It had proven to be a frustrating experience, since Tsume constantly balked at the idea of involving numbers.

Danzo said nothing to her comment – he was two hours ahead of the enemy, which meant they were gaining fast. When he remained silent, she said, “So… you don’t have a summon?”

The intrusion of her tactless question momentarily derailed Danzo’s planning processes for directing Tsume’s olfactory training, strategies against the following Iwa shinobi, how to prevent Tsume from forming exceptionally unhealthy ideas of sex from her abnormal sexual experiences, and rescue of the jinchuuriki. Never mind the fact that he suspected, given her clan and utter disregard of fear, Tsume probably would’ve eventually developed unhealthy ideas of sex anyway. He still felt oddly violated whenever he thought of Inuzuka Natsumi in all her battle glory and how she deliberate antagonized _everyone_. He had a true moment of thankfulness when the notorious Hell Hound retired some fifteen years ago. “No.”

“Why?”

Danzo remained silent a moment as he slid down the steep side of a canyon, skipped the river, ran up the gully until they hit a sparse forest of pine, and then doubled back to the river. He ran north on top of the choppy, churning water. The wind was just as fierce as it funneled through the canyon, but it was at his back pushing him, instead of at his front. Small blessings. A storm was brewing above their heads, the thick clouds steel gray and silver – even he could smell the impending snow. He calculated the efficacy of running through such a storm when it finally unleashed its fury, especially when he could feel Tsume shivering against his back, wet from the river’s splashing rapids.

Despite his ongoing silence, Tsume wouldn’t be deterred from her current line of questions. “There’s lots of ninjas who have summons. I thought it was the _thing_ for powerful shinobi.”

At least this conversation was much safer than their previous one regarding sex. “Summons must be freely given – you can’t just steal a scroll, since it’s a breach of contract even before the contract can be signed. The original holder of the summon must have a great deal of trust to pass it on, and the person receiving the contract requires a deep-enough chakra reservoir to even be able to summon. It can be very draining.”

“So…” He felt Tsume’s claws scratch his shoulders as she flexed her fingers in thought. “So no one trusts you?”

Of all the things…! “I see your listening skills have become rusty,” Danzo said through gritted teeth. Trust – bah. Sex was probably safer to talk about than _trust_.

“You’ve got loads of chakra, Danzo.”

“Not the point.”

“So… no one trusts you.”

“Also not the point!” He took advantage of the wind’s lift to propel him upward as he scaled the cliff wall. He could hear waterfalls in the distance, and didn’t want to run more risk of getting drenched further than they already had from the spraying waters.

“But that’s what you said!”

“Summons are typically given through a mentor. I’ve never been mentored by someone with a summon. To ask someone with whom you don’t have an _established_ , trustworthy relationship is to expose a desire that could be exploited.” Even to ask someone with whom he _did_ have such a relationship would open him up to exploitation. Asking would require offered favors. He didn’t want to owe anyone anything, because debts interfered with his relationship with Konoha.

It was also utterly beside and _beyond_ the point that there were very few persons with whom he had a mutually trustworthy relationship, let alone such persons having contracts that they were willing to share.

“Oh.” They reached the top of the cliff. Danzo pulled himself over the edge with his hands, and stopped long enough to take in his surroundings. They had left the alpine tundra and entered the sharp, jagged mountains that marked the territory of Waterfall in the last half hour. It was warmer than Earth, but not by much. The soil was dark and rich in the valleys, the vegetation lush and vibrant in all its vivid autumn colors, and the forests of evergreen trees were just as large as Fire Country’s deciduous forests. The many waterfalls and rivers fed from the glaciers blanketing Waterfall’s northern mountains made it humid. “Still sounds like it all comes down to trust to me, even if it’s because _you’re_ the one who doesn’t trust.”

He ignored her startlingly accurate insight as he skirted the edge of the canyon, moving towards the river that tumbled over the edges into a magnificent waterfall.

“My Great-Aunt Natsumi – she’s really into summons. Studies them all the time. She’s been trying to figure out how to turn our ninken into summons, so that way, we can call on them after they die.”

Impossible. Summoning contracts had been made in the time of the Sage of Six Paths with techniques that were since lost. The only ways to obtain them were either through someone who held an active contract, or from a summon creature that deemed a person worthy, usually when a person attempted to summon without a contract in place and unexpectedly found themselves at the summon’s home. And while summoning dead things or persons _was_ possible… you didn’t always get what you reached for. 

After all, there’s always a lot of _things_ in the darkness eagerly reaching back.

“Aunt Natsumi likes me, you know. She said I could have my pick of any summon that I wanted – I can have up to four!”

Also impossible. “You can only hold one contract at a time.”

“Nuh uh!” Danzo could imagine Tsume’s outraged expression to match her voice. “Aunt Natsumi said you can hold as many contracts as you want, just so long as you never sign them the same way. I could sign a contract with my left hand, and my right hand could sign the contract to summon squirrels, and then my right foot – if I hold the brush in my toes – can sign a contract so I can summon cats!”

He could just imagine the chaos that would ensue. “Hopefully not all at the same time.”

Tsume’s feet wiggled. He was beginning to realize that Tsume’s feet gave away her thought process as well as her face did. “Oh. That would be messy, I suppose, what with cats and dogs and squirrels and all that,” she muttered. He felt her breath puff against the back of his neck. As desire bloomed lazily in the pit of his stomach, he realized that his slapdash modification was wearing off. He began looking less for a viable crossing over the river, and more for a sheltered area. “But I don’t really want cats or squirrels. I want something awesomely cool to use in battle – like a hedgehog!”

“Not conventional,” Danzo said as he paused a moment, balanced perfectly atop a boulder slick with river spray as he surveyed their geographical surroundings. “But would probably be quite effective in battle.” If _he_ had to decide between slugs or hedgehog, he’d probably pick the hedgehog, too. Unless you had to ride the hedgehog, the same way that he had seen Jiraiya riding his toads. But in most situations, hedgehogs would be a far more useful weapon.

“Hey, the Iwa nin stopped.” Danzo remained silent as Tsume sniffed the air. “Yeah. They’re hunkering down against the storm, since it’s hitting them now. And they’re making a fire.”

How fortuitous. A blizzard would effectively cover their trail, and delay pursuit. “We’re pausing here then.” He dropped Tsume off his back, and then grabbed her shirts as she lost her footing on the rock. She dangled from his grasp as he hopped down to more solid ground and walked to the forest. “Go gather me some firewood.” As she ran ahead, his pack bouncing against her back, he inspected the ground. Too close to the river. He retreated further, bypassing Tsume as she got tangled in the thick underbrush in her quest for dry wood. The sight of her bending over to sift through the thick blanket of fallen leaves made him want to bend over with her, pressing skin against skin.

Arousal was beginning to curl within just as the desire, but it wasn’t rapid. He could deal with that.

Deeper in the woods, where the ground felt less damp, Danzo’s hands flashed through multiple seals. _Earth release: Earth Pit._ The ground rumbled beneath his feet, and then a split opened up in the earth. Steps that led downward into the darkness formed.

“Cool, this is even better than Orochimaru’s pit! Someday, I’m going to do really awesome ninjutsu just like that.”

Ah, the fleeting fancies of youth and simpletons everywhere. “Follow me,” Danzo said without looking over his shoulder as he descended the steps. The steps led into a large, empty, flat space that he lit with another jutsu, placing glowing hand marks against the solid earthen walls. Tsume followed after, her arms filled with multiple branches. As Danzo made a fire, Tsume left to gather more wood. Danzo left the taller, thicker branches in a separate pile. A gentle wind jutsu over the fire filtered the smoke as it left through the pit, so it wouldn’t be noticed.

Tsume made two more trips for the firewood, and then brought back a dead rabbit on her last trip. “I suckered him out of his hole,” she said, holding it up by one plump leg. “I thought maybe he’d make a good dinner.”

Danzo really had no intention of cooking or staying long enough to cook – he really only made the fire to obtain the needed charcoal, and the warmth it provided was a welcome side effect – but shrugged anyway. He saw a ten-year-old Tsume in her currently eager, cheerful impulsiveness to help and obey, and it was gratifying in light of everything that happened. She was a resilient child, and may come out of the recent experience without too many… hmm, how had he told Sakumo last year? If Tsume could come out of her experience as a child-whore without becoming an emotionally-stunted misbehaving deviant with antisocial tendencies or any combination thereof, he would cook her any number of rabbits.

“You skin it, I’ll cook it.”

“Okay!” She was also intent on getting warm and her clothes dried out while the opportunity was available, as indicated by the socks she stuck on some of the taller branches Danzo had put aside and strung over the fire. “Can I take these off too and dry them?” Tsume asked, plucking at her shifts and shirts – the temptation to strip them off himself loomed in his mind. Danzo poked at the fire and carefully withdrew a flaming ember.

“Might as well. Go ahead and strip down completely, since I need to look at your seal again. Its effects are… leaking.”

The look she gave him was knowing; he wasn’t surprised – his arousal was impossible to hide from the nose of someone who could detect the Hokage’s tea from four countries away. As Tsume stripped her many layers off and spread them out to dry, he carefully cooled the ember with water from his canteen and methodically crushed it into a fine charcoal paste. He then lit six of the long branches he had set aside earlier and arranged them as flaming torches in a lopsided oval close to the fire.

“Lay down there,” he told the naked Tsume as he indicated the center of the oval. She obeyed without hesitation, her head tilted and eyes curious. Beneath the flickering light from the burning torches, her skin aglow and shadows prominent in the hollows of her cheeks and eyes, Tsume looked ethereal and older. He ignored the aesthetics – he appreciated beauty, but not of a twelve year old.

The arousal and desire weren’t as forceful as the previous night, so he was able to coax her seal open and inspect it more closely without a hurried frenzy. Danzo had already acquainted himself with the larger characters of the seal, so he concentrated on the smaller characters and their intended influence. Fuuinjutsu was a complicated and difficult art to master; Danzo didn’t consider himself a slouch, but he also wasn’t a prodigy like Jiraiya, or a genius – like Orochimaru. Twisted, diabolical, but a genius nonetheless.

“One thing I don’t understand is the medium he used to attach the seal to you,” Danzo muttered as he traced the markings on Tsume’s skin. She shivered at his touch, and seemed to uncurl and relax as his fingertips traveled over her body. He could see the degeneration of his earlier temporary modifications. The edges burned bright as they flaked away from her skin.

“What’s a medium?”

“Did he use ink? Charcoal? Did he paint it directly on you, or did he transfer it from a scroll?”

She looked confused. One uncertain finger pressed against her chin as she arched minutely against his tracing touch. “Um. You mean how did the seal get on me in the first place? Dunno. Orochimaru said that only someone with a foot fetish would notice it being on my toe, so he bit my toe, and there the seal was.” Her own toes kept curling and uncurling.

Danzo froze. “He _bit_ you?” His desire was torn – on one hand, he wanted to keep touching Tsume’s skin, stroking her like a fire, igniting sparks in her eyes and fanning the flames of her pleasure. On the other hand, he wanted to hunt Orochimaru down and disembowel him for biting Tsume like he was marking her as his territory. _Mine_ snarled a voice, as another voice boomed, TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD. He was disturbed to find his normal thought process and justifications happily aligning themselves with the seal-induced desire.

(His arousal, on the other hand, twitched in approval at the general idea of biting, and imagined love bites scattered across her body.)

“Yeah. It was kinda disturbing.”

It was even more disturbing that Orochimaru had transferred a seal directly into her _blood_ and _body_ using… whatever medium he used. How does one prepare and store a seal on one’s _teeth_? Danzo had never heard of what the actual implications of such a move would be, but he suddenly knew that such an action permanently etched the seal into Tsume, like gold being stamped into brass.

Condemned even before she was a teenager.

“Don’t be mad,” Tsume whispered, reaching out to Danzo. She touched the back of one of his hands, and then pointed directly at his nose. His hairs stirred at the unfamiliar gentle touch. “I’m not mad, so you can’t be mad, either.”

“You should hate him for what he did.” Danzo knew the error of hate though. Hatred led to wars – wars tore Konoha apart, paper cut by bitter, bloody, paper cut.

“You know, Grandmother told me I should hate the Uchiha for what _he_ did.” Tsume raised the hand that was touching his arm to point at her head. “But I can’t hate this Madara. I don’t even know if I could hate Grandmother. I think…. I think it’s hard for me to feel hatred, almost like I can’t feel fear, you know. Are the two things connected, hate and fear?”

In the midst of the blooming arousal and desire, he marveled at her simplicity. “We often hate what we fear. If you cannot fear, I imagine that leaves little to hate. What must it be like, to live without such burdens of fear or hatred?” It was a rhetorical question, one which he never should’ve uttered out loud, especially to a child. It revealed too much of his own internal conflicts. But the shock of being told that someone in the Uchiha clan – someone who _should’ve_ been dead, even though Shinzou always claimed it was Madara – was responsible for Tsume’s traumatic brain injury made his mind spin. After all, the greatest traitor/defector had been an Uchiha. Who’s to say that Uchiha Madara hadn’t left behind some slow-acting poison in the clan that targeted others?

And who’s to say that Shinzou’s claims _weren’t_ made from an overemotional, nearly hysterical state of a guardian seeing her beloved child so ruthlessly hurt and near death?

Tsume took his question as an actual inquiry. “I think it’s all right. It seems like fear gets in the way of people doing stuff, and that’s something I don’t have to worry about.” She had the audacity to sound cheerful. “I do get stuff done!”

He dragged his mind out of the gutter where her words made it take a sharp dive, and forced his attention back to her seal. He could address only one earth-shattering revelation at a time. He had no fear of her trying to take exploit his probing questions and manipulating the information for her own personal gain. Tsume was an honest girl with honest intentions, and still behaved as though the rest of the world (or maybe just Danzo) should respond the same way. Such strange, helpless naivety.

“You won’t be getting much ‘stuff’ done with this permanent seal. You’ll spend most of your life on your back, knees spread to whatever grunting brute manages to get past your defenses.”

“But you turned it off last night.”

He traced the modification he applied, left hand sliding down her abdomen, over her left thigh, and then stopping to rest against her left kneecap. “Temporary, only.” And the gods help him if his temporary modification collapsed in the middle of a battle. He needed to know what he was dealing with, if there was anyway he could aim Tsume as a distraction without getting either of them killed, or his mind tangled in the snaring effects of the siren call. “This character, here,” with his other hand, he traced the scrollwork that surrounded her umbilicus, “will deteriorate and eventually eliminate any and all attempts to permanently turn off the seal since it’s designed to protect the seals from sabotage. It’s known as a suicide stop – very common in many seals. This character,” he traced the one spread across her left breast, “reinforces attention of any man who tries to dismiss his interest in you.” He supposed that was one small blessing – the seal was geared to attracting adult men, not women and/or children and/or animals.

“The more you fight, the more you want?” In her oblivious boldness, Tsume stroked his bulging arousal.

Danzo shoved her hand away. “Roughly speaking, yes.” It helped that he wasn’t so much fighting his desire for her as he was redirecting his interest to the actual seal. He estimated that he had less than ten minutes before the modifications collapsed completely. “This character,” he laid his right hand over one that spread elegantly across her right hip, “converts your chakra signature into desire. The more you flare your chakra, the stronger you are desired.”

“But what if I shut my chakra off completely?”

“Unless you deliberately make sure you die in the process, there’s no way to permanently shut off chakra – it’s part and parcel to life itself. You can only mask it from being sensed. These characters,” he deftly touched the left side of her ribs, where he could feel the vibrations of her heart, “ensures that no matter how well you mask your chakra, you _will_ always be sensed if visual contact is made. These characters, on the other side, react to the chakra of the onlooker – the more the onlooker has and can harness, the more it lures them. Between that and the characters that ensure you’re sensed and the conversion of your chakra, I shudder to think what would happen if you flared your chakra into a wave of killing intent against someone very powerful.

“Here,” his hand moved down her side, “is where desire invokes arousal. Beside it, this character,” the palm of his hand rested against her pubic bone, “is probably the only reason why you haven’t been fucked to death – it helps spins your allure into making the ensnared feel a sense of… hmm, not quite possession, nor protectiveness. More like a guardianship.” It was just easier to explain it as a character – in truth, it was actually a seal within the seal, designed to ensnare the victim and forcefully bend their will to meet Tsume’s whims and desires, as a slave to the larger seal’s inflicted lust. He wondered if it was a concession Orochimaru had made to keep Tsume relatively safe.

“At first glance, this is a one-part seal, but there’s three layers to it, all reinforcing the same thing.” Danzo’s hand swept down her ribcage, across her abdomen, and down further. His touch was gentle in its exploration as he cupped her sex with sliding fingers. “The seal is deliberately designed as a siren call to anyone with power. Very overdone, quite frankly, since men already usually function with the head below their belts.”

Tsume gasped and her knees parted wide at his touch. Her toes curled. “What does that say about you?” she asked as her hips began moving against his hand.

“I can’t reapply my temporary modifications until my old ones deteriorate completely. Besides, I’m testing something.” The desire was controllable as long as he bent his will towards meeting Tsume’s needs – that was the purpose of the deepest layer, the seal-within-the-seal. He had been able to focus and escape with Tsume on his back, instead of forcing her onto her back, because she had wanted to leave. And she had implied before, with some disturbing eagerness, about how he had been the only one to make her feel good…

Danzo watched her face and the seals – felt her fluctuating chakra-desire-lust – as he massaged and stroked her. “Close your eyes. Concentrate on what your body is feeling,” he whispered.

She did after a moment of hesitation. She arched beneath his deft touch, her breath quickening. Danzo traced the seals with his other hand, stroking her beasts and rolling her nipples between his fingertips. He watched how the chakra flared in different characters, and wondered what the play of chakra rippling across her skin would look like if the seal wasn’t on display. If he could have Tsume sated and sleepy by the time his modification wore off, then it might be enough to control his own arousal and desire against the workings of the seal, because she will have nothing left to desire – her satisfaction would be complete. He ducked his head to suck a nipple. It was disturbingly small in his mouth. He _had_ managed to escape her room the previous night and flee, after all, when she had been sated. It wouldn’t hurt to try.

Except that it did. ( _TWELVE YEARS OLD. Yes, conscience, I’m quite aware of what I’m corrupting – TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD. Shut. UP!)_

Tsume’s orgasm was swift in coming – more quickly than the older women whose bodies he’d coaxed in the past. Unfettered by embarrassment, endowed with the vigor of youth, Tsume reacted quickly to his touch. Her body quaked around his hand, knees clenching tight as she arched her back into a tight bow and her breath came in short, squeaky pants. Her seals flashed purple in the firelight as multiple characters lit up momentarily – especially the seal for guardianship. His suspicions proved correct.

Tsume’s unmarked face was also lit up, more from an unexpected blissful happiness than anything else, as she pushed herself upright and looked at him with an expression that… Danzo resolutely turned his face away, to the nearby pile of crushed charcoal. He dragged his hand away from her pelvis, and lifted it to his mouth. He ignored the stench of her musk as he bit his thumb bloody, and then coated his hand with it. Then he dragged his hand through the charcoal until it was a bloody, sticky paste.

At that moment, the last of his temporary modification deteriorated completely. The bud of desire that had been nestled inside his chest bloomed into a rush of desire. He tilted his head back and let it wash through him. He was finally at leisure to sort through the myriad of subtle layers attempting to influence him, and he pinpointed each to a portion of her seals. The desire to protect. The desire to possess. The desire to yield. The desire to hide. The desire to consume. Because Danzo gave Tsume the attention she desperately craved – attention of any sort, particularly acknowledgement of being wanted – the seals didn’t exploit his own desires to a mindless frenzy that stroked arousal to unbearable heights.

The arousal was still there, but was bearable.

Until Tsume started stroking him through his pants. It took a moment to redirect his mind after it recovered from his shock. “Stop.” He lightly pinned her arm beneath his knee, and fought down the desire to shove her hand down his pants.

“But I can smell you!”

The more he fought her desire to please him, the more his own lust worked against him. “That can wait until I’ve replaced my modification to turn this thing off.”

“Oh. But won’t it cause you any pain?” Danzo remained silent as he infused his hand with chakra and began retracing his modification from last night. The seal he made didn’t glow like the rest of her body, but it would do until he could get her to a fuuinjutsu master who was not Orochimaru. Tsume appeared to be making up for his silence with her own chatter. “That’s what some of the other guys told me, you know. That having an erection for a long time hurts, and that it’s my job to make sure that there was pleasure instead of pain.”

He thought of her tongue sliding up and down the shaft of his erection. “ _Shut up_.”

Tsume did so, fuming resentfully. Danzo’s arousal and desire flared.

“Talk to me about the summons you’d like and why.” He started the multiple modifications to her seals, trying to tamper down their effects for when the “off” modification wore off. That would make modifying it in the future easier, especially if he didn’t have to pleasure her first to ease the seal’s effects.

“Okay! So, I was thinking of the hedgehog summon because they’d be really awesome to use in a battle, see…” As Tsume resumed her chattering, toes twitching restlessly and the arm he wasn’t pinning with a knee waving in the air to punctuate her words, he felt the arousal and desire ebb backwards, like a rolling boil coming down to a gentle simmer. The more he opposed her own desires, the more his revved up. It seemed deliberately undermining and cruel to have that sort of seal on a child prostitute in a brothel frequented by vicious and cruel shinobi.

“So then, of course, I also have to get a contract for dogs. You know that’s to be expected…”

He focused on his modifications, careful not to make a mistake even when she absent-mindedly wriggled beneath him.

“…so then, I thought, hedgehog and dogs are really practical, you know, so I thought of getting something that would be absolutely cool to have, that no one else would ever think of having! I couldn’t decide if I wanted dragonflies or butterflies…”

He swiped clean one messed up seal modification with the sleeve hem of his other arm. “Hold still,” he grumbled, focusing on redrawing the modification. She did, somewhat.

“…so then I thought, what would be cooler than a dragonfly, but a real dragon! So I asked Aunt Natsumi if she had any dragon summons, but she said no. She did have a unicorn summon, but that wouldn’t do me any good unless I stayed a virgin the rest of my life. Good thing I didn’t set my heart on that, huh, Danzo?”

Since her prattling paused then as if she wanted an answer, he murmured a wordless acquiescence.

“She said she did have a Baku summon, but I didn’t know what a Baku was. Aunt Natsumi said that they’re mythological beasts that eat dreams and nightmares. But what if I wanted to give someone nightmares? That seems more like a ninja-thing to do, so I told her I’d think about it, but not really, you know.”

And as Tsume prattled on, nothing more than a seemingly innocent child, Danzo did what he could to make sure she’d stay that way for just a little longer, even though he didn’t particularly like children. (They were, as Tsume so readily demonstrated, irrational and overemotional creatures.)


	11. Alpha years - Chapter Eight

When Danzo’s modifications had completed, Tsume immediately sat upright. “I’m hungry! Can we have the rabbit before or after your blowjob?” His mind stuttered – it barely had time to reverse course from where he had buried his stream of thought into the logistics of fuuinjutsu. “I suppose I should skin it after the blowjob, which would give you time to recover.” Danzo barely managed to fend off a twelve year old girl’s questing hands.

“I’m fine!” he protested, feeling his face heat up as he cupped himself. “You just… go take care of the rabbit.”

She gave him another knowing look. “I can smell your arousal, and I’m not even trying.”

“It’s part of my training.”

Tsume put her hands on her naked hips. The seal still lay open and spread across her skin – silver and black. Between the seal, her stance, and the flickering firelight, she looked like an unattractively scorned fertility goddess rising from the soil. “I’ve never heard of this training.” Then a look of uncertainty crossed her face. “ ‘Course, I haven’t heard of a lot of training, and I haven’t been able to do much of anything these last few months since I graduated.”

Without the influence of her seal, the lingering arousal burning through his veins was tolerable. “It’s shinobi training, meant to harden your body into the ultimate weapon.”

Tsume’s expression became hungry. “How does it work?”

“A weapon is only as good as its wielder, which in the case of our bodies, is our mind.” He pointed first at his head, and then at hers with one hand, still careful to keep the other hand covering himself as a barrier against grabby preteen hands. She frowned unhappily, no doubt because his gesture brought attention to her brain injury. “I have trained my body to not be hindered by the effects of hunger, pain, discomfort, exhaustion… And now I’m working on not being hindered by the effects of arousal.” An oversight in his training that he had never before considered. Nor was he going to _thank_ Orochimaru or Tsume in helping him uncover this oversight.

“Why?” Tsume scratched her head with a frustrated look. “I mean, you gotta eat when you’re hungry, or you’d starve. Kokoro-chan said that if you didn’t eat, your mind would get all foggy and then you’d pass out.”

“Sound reasoning on her part, but that is the extreme of hunger.” Danzo paused. Tsume tilted her head to the side and studied him. His eye was critical and objective as he rolled an assessing gaze over her body – no personal desire stirred him now, nor was his arousal fanned. If the seal modifications could hold long enough to find someone with the experience, supplies, and creativity to render it obsolete, then he’d never have to touch her again. And he felt no shred or remorse or twinge of loss at the idea of never touching Tsume again. He flashed his teeth in a wicked smile at her, and was gratified to see her hunch down with caution and angle her body away to make it a smaller target, just as she had when she was ten years old. “If you want to tell me how to shape yourself into a great shinobi, I suggest you make yourself useful.”

Then he fended off her questing hands again, because he forgot how singular her thoughts were. “Not _that_ type of useful! Go put your damn clothes on and skin the rabbit!” Danzo slapped her buttock for good measure when she wasn’t moving fast enough.

Tsume made sure she was safely separated from him with the fire and her strung up clothes serving as a barrier before speaking. “You spanked me!”

“And I’ll do more than that if you don’t hurry up and get dressed.”

She leered at him. It was not an attractive look on a preteen. “Do you promise?”

He made sure that the glower he gave her was one of the worst in his repertoire – the sort that made grown ANBU quiver and quake in their boots. “ _That_ is inappropriate, Tsume. Do not ever talk to me like that, again.” Danzo was going to have to do a lot of training with this child if he had any hope of maintaining his carefully-built, hard-fought reputation in Konoha.

Instead of being intimidated, Tsume just shrugged and began tugging on her multiple layers of clothes, uncaring about how she was doing it in front of him. To reinforce boundaries, Danzo turned his head away so he didn’t have to watch her dress.

As Tsume dismantled the rabbit with a gleeful bloodlust that Danzo wholeheartedly approved of, he rearranged himself so that he knelt before her, like samurai often did to each other with friendly, but professional, exchanges. “The first thing to always keep in mind,” Danzo began, “is that your body, mind, and heart are the first, last, and ultimate weapons at your disposal. They will do almost everything you’ll ever require, above and beyond reason, but only if you’re willing to discipline yourself.”

He let his hands rest on his kneecaps instead of crossing his arms, so their exchange would look less defensive on his part. “A ninja is a weapon above all weapons – a weapon forged and designed to wield all things like a tool, but especially themselves. Your mind, your body, and your heart are the foundations on which you build a castle of strength and power. You must have absolute control over the foundations, for the slightest flaw will become magnified as your strength increases.”

Tsume paused in eviscerating the rabbit with his kunai. Her eyes reflected the firelight. “I…I don’t get it.” She huffed in impatient sigh. “I don’t do meta, um, metaphysical stuff. Yuu-san said that I’m too literal-minded.”

Why was it that every time Danzo attempted to treat Tsume like an intelligent young woman, she would do her utmost to prove how futile such a thing was?

Danzo squashed down his irritation. “Since you insist on hiding behind a façade of stupidity, persisting stubbornly in remaining brainwashed by the lies and propaganda your great-grandmother has fed you for a number of years, very well. I shall endeavor to explain it to you using simple pictures and small words.” He ignored how Tsume hunched over her rabbit with an offended look on her face.

“The mind,” he said, “rules the body, but is unfortunately guided by the heart – often to the point of mutiny. The heart doesn’t rationalize decisions – it feels the decisions, of whether they are right or wrong, and clouds rational judgment. You may take pity on an enemy, as he cries about how his wife is dead and there’s no one to care for his three young children. Your heart, overwhelmed by this pity, stays the striking hand, but you suffer the consequences of this decision when you turn your back and the enemy immediately stabs you. The heart opens one up to emotional manipulation. I see such here, and now.” Danzo slowly and deliberately pointed at Tsume. “Your great-grandmother leads you astray with her lies of your stupidity. I’ve told you once before that you _aren’t_ stupid, but your heart would much rather believe the words of someone who sold you into sexual slavery – no doubt she leaped forward to volunteer for such an opportunity – over the words of someone who removed you from the slavery.”

The lesson he wanted to teach – _see how your great-grandmother’s emotions of resentment and hatred destroyed your life and potential?_ – would have to wait for another time.

Tsume rocked slowly, the slightly dismembered rabbit carcass in her lap nearly forgotten. At Danzo’s silence, she hastily resumed prepping her kill.

“As a shinobi, the heart cannot take precedence over the mind – emotions are irrational and illogical, and leads the finest astray. The body, of course, is only as good as the mind operating the body, for the body does as the mind commands. I think: I shall run for four hours, and my legs obey. I think: I shall throw this kunai to strike the center of my target, and my hand obeys. Our bodies are our ultimate weapons. A kunai can be knocked aside; an exploding tag can be ripped away. What sort of weapon do you have if your enemy catches you bathing naked? I can kill a grown man with my bare hands by twisting his neck – I don’t require a sharp blade or a seal.

“If my hands are incapacitated, I can kill a grown man with my feet. If I don’t have my feet, I’ll tear his throat out with my teeth. If they kick my teeth out, I’ll bleed all over them – blood is corrosive and a bitch to get out of clothes, so at least I’ll have died knowing I have irritated some poor laundry lass, somewhere. But the body has physical limitations and buffers designed to protect it from injury and death, therefore my mind must override these weaknesses. A body’s weakness – hunger, exhaustion, intolerance of heat or cold, thirst, arousal – must be tempered and honed, so it cannot be a burden that interferes with your ability to complete the mission. You cannot allow the cold of winter to slow your steps when the enemy follows closely behind. You cannot allow the desire to sleep leave you open and vulnerable to enemy attacks. You must work hard to overrule these weaknesses.

“Naturally, all these things serve a purpose as signals to our bodies that a biological process must be met in order to maintain health. But they are also like a poison – little by little, over time, you can build an immunity to these signals.”

From the confused, dazed look on Tsume’s face, Danzo knew he had lost her a few minutes ago. He sighed, feeling drained and tired, but not willing to show such. “Your body, mind, and heart are weapons, like your kunai. They can always use more honing to keep a sharp edge.”

Tsume brightened in understanding at that, and then completed the dismantling of the rabbit.

oOoOoOo

Danzo allowed himself and Tsume a few hours of sleep. She curled up against his side beneath his blanket for shared warmth as the blizzard outside reached its crescendo and the fire inside dwindled down into a pile of glowing embers. Ideally, it was best to hunker down and wait out the storm, but undisturbed footsteps in freshly fallen snow would broadcast their path to the Iwa shinobi as easily as wearing bright orange in the middle of a clover patch. So when the blizzard was still raging strong, Danzo rousted Tsume.

Ignoring her resentful grumbles, Danzo smeared her hands, feet, and ears with the leftover rabbit grease he had insisted on saving. “This will help protect you from frost bite,” he explained as she wrinkled her nose and grimaced. Then he did likewise with his face, ears, and hands. He dressed her in his spare woolen shirt, securing it in place with some strategically-placed ninja wire, and tore strips from his spare pants to wrap around her head and hands. If there had been enough room to tuck her in his jacket while he wore it to continue sharing body heat, he readily would’ve done so. After she climbed on his back once more, he wrapped the blanket around them both, making sure the folds were as tightly secured as he could get without hampering movement. With everything completed, Danzo exited their shelter into the blizzard.

It was dark and bitterly cold. He immediately began circulating his chakra to increase warmth throughout his body. Tsume hunkered down against his back as he dismissed the earthen pit. The blowing snow would cover all evidence of their presence, and, short of one of the Iwa nin being a rare sensor, would be utterly lost.

Danzo didn’t travel nonstop through the blizzard. Every half an hour, he would stop and open another underground pit to rest and warm up. He was careful to pace himself within Tsume’s limitations, since she didn’t have the stamina or experience to circulate her chakra like he could. At one point, after considering Tsume as she shivered under his heavy coat, he said, “You haven’t had much chance to improve your stamina or skills since graduation, have you?”

The look Tsume gave him could’ve curdled milk. “I spent most of the time on my knees or back, and really didn’t encourage stamina from my customers. No, no. What do _you_ think?”

“I think your sensei has a lot of work to do.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “Do you know who my sensei is supposed to be? I was never told…” She rubbed a stray hand against her bare forehead as she hunched forward against her curled legs. “I didn’t even get handed my forehead protector before Grandmother hauled me out of Konoha.”

“What happened to Kuromaru?”

Tsume’s face crumpled, like she was fighting back tears. “I left him with Kakashi. They get along so well, you know, and Kakashi was still going to need someone to look after him if I… while I was gone.”

Danzo realized, with a chill that had nothing to do with the blizzard, that Tsume had expected to never return to Konoha. His mind cast back to the various things she had said. _Because I am a kunoichi, and I have a purpose, even if I’m not wanted… It hurt a lot. And there was usually a lot of blood on me and the sheets, especially the first few times – I was just **drenched**. _

_You took away my purpose._

_I was just **drenched.**_

His memory flashed through that night in the stark bathroom – TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD – and the blood smearing his body. Danzo couldn’t even begin to imagine being inside Tsume’s head, with her simple and linear thoughts, the first time she was raped – _I was just **drenched** _– all for the poorly-designed plans of a man that Konoha proudly considered one of the best. Or how her mind worked and thoughts ran in the months following, bravely holding out for that promised contact.

Unable to sit still with his thoughts anymore, Danzo and Tsume set out once more after he bundled her up again. The wind wasn’t as fierce, but the snow still fell rapidly and limited their vision. Danzo had Tsume up her sense of smell to fifty percent max to confirm that no shinobi within fifty kilometers were following them. She caught and held onto Kushina’s scent, which helped Danzo maintain a sense of direction within the constantly unchanging-changing world of white as he leaped through the snow, deftly dodging boulders, gullies, and trees.

“I was thinking,” Tsume said, her soft voice barely audible above the wind, “that I can talk Aunt Natsumi into having Kakashi sign a summon scroll, too. It would be like my graduation gift to him, when he finishes the Academy. Kakashi is scary-smart. He remembers _everything_ , and I used to read to him at night from my Academy books, so he’ll graduate early, I just know it. He helped me with some of the Shinobi rules when I was going over them at the breakfast table – he knew them better than I did! I want to give him the dog summon, you know. He likes the ninken, he should have his own dog.”

“Won’t your clan be angry?”

“I don’t care what Grandmother thinks when it comes to Kakashi. She _gave_ him to _me_ , even told me to take care of him when he was first born, so I have. And I’m alpha, and I’ve decided that he’s mine, and there’s nothing she can do or say that will change that. So if I want to give him the same summon that I have, I can do that.” There was a brief moment following Tsume’s indignant answer. Then she added, sounding rather imperious, “Besides, Grandmother isn’t going to live forever. Especially after I ask Kokoro-chan’s older brothers for a really good, undetectable poison.”

Danzo choked and nearly staggered at that.

Tsume continued blithely. “Not that poisons are undetectable, mind you. All those poisons that are tasteless and odorless really aren’t, but I just need one that Grandmother wouldn’t be able to detect, which means I’d have to mix it in a meatloaf with lots of onions.”

“You’re going to poison your own grandmother?”

“Why not?” Tsume’s voice was nonchalant. “She poisoned me _first_ , only she used words instead of an actual poison. I thought about what you said last night, you know, about Grandmother brainwashing me. You’re right and wrong. See, it’s like poison you talked about when it came to training your body to ignore sleep and hunger and all that.” May wonders never cease – the child actually listened and retained information! “A little bit of it over time does help you build an immunity to it. Grandmother wasn’t so much brainwashing me as she was poisoning me.

“But see, you don’t just build an immunity to poison – it also makes you weaker and sicker over time the longer you’re exposed to it. And you can’t just stop the poison suddenly, not when it’s been in your system for so long. You have to wean off of it nice and slow, I think. Or something. It’s hard to remember the classes in the Academy on poisoning. But anyway, I have decided that it’ll be poison for Grandmother, one way or another.”

Her last sentence was spoken with a nervous uncertainty, almost as if seeking his approval, and that derailed his train of thoughts more than the idea of her ruthlessly poisoning her clan’s matron.

Danzo’s first thought at that was, _Please don’t let her have a crush on me._ He wasn’t personally acquainted with the flights of fancy a young girl might have, but he knew that he wouldn’t tolerate such nonsense aimed at his person. He was a hard, brutal man without patience or empathy, although it didn’t surprise him in the least that she was developing such a misplaced affection – he _had_ rescued her from a horrendous fate, and since she couldn’t bond with her captors because of the ongoing brutality, she was instead bonding with _him_.

His second thought was, _How do I crush this as soon as possible before anyone catches wind of it?_ More specifically, before her great-grandmother, Orochimaru, or Sakumo caught wind of Tsume’s poorly placed flights of fancy. The singular or combined realization from any of those three would turn his life and ambitions into the ninth pit of hell.

Inuzuka Shinzou had no problem selling her adolescent great-granddaughter to a brothel under pretense of a mission, and would see an opportunity for public humiliation in said great-granddaughter’s crush on Konoha’s War Hawk – which meant public humiliation for Danzo. (There was a deep, dark peat bog with Shinzou’s name on it, in the Land of Rice Paddies. Or a bottle of poison somewhere that could conveniently be emptied into one of Tsume’s meatloaves.)

Orochimaru would snatch at anything for use against Danzo, after he removed Orochimaru’s handy-dandy little mole from Tetsuzanshi. Danzo knew that there was already going to be hell to pay when the Hokage learned that Danzo had deliberately intervened against a Black Ops in which he wasn’t centrally involved. Danzo knew the protocol for Black Ops – this could destroy his career.

Sakumo… well, Sakumo had the potential to hit Danzo where he was the most vulnerable, because he (reluctantly) liked and respected Sakumo. Although Danzo would much rather die than admit this failing weakness of his to still experience emotions and such simple desires like _wanting_ another person’s respect and kinship. 

And… well, he _had_ tried to get rid of Sakumo. Danzo had been so efficiently brutal and cruel the first several weeks as Sakumo’s new captain that even Hiruzen and Kagami eyed Danzo from across the safe distance of Hiruzen’s desk, having brought Sakumo and Danzo forward for questioning as several complaints had been filed in regards to Danzo’s behavior. Sakumo said that he was unbreakable, and Danzo had taken it for a challenge.

Sakumo just tilted his head to the side and said, “You know this thing you’re doing, Captain? Where you get really shy and scared of feelings so you attempt to be all ninja and quietly sabotage relationships because you can’t stand making mistakes or people seeing that you really are just human? Yeah, that’s not going to work with me.”

On the other hand, there was a great potential in aiming Sakumo at Orochimaru and Shinzou. Such an idea warmed the black cockles of his heart.

Tsume took his sudden happiness as approval. As she cheered, he was hasty to say, “I would never approve of anyone attempting to kill of their allies in this time of war.”

She fell quiet a long moment. Against his waist, where she had wrapped her legs like a stubborn barnacle, he felt the muscles in her shins flex and the brush of her moving toes. “I can wait until the war is won,” Tsume said with a sly voice.

“Don’t poison her out of hate,” Danzo replied.

“Oh, I won’t hate it. I’ll probably enjoy every minute of it.”

Except that Danzo knew she wouldn’t, because Tsume was an Inuzuka, and her great-grandmother, no matter what was said or done, would always be Pack. But if thinking of petty acts of vengeance helped Tsume come to terms with the damage she had suffered, of how Shinzou had undermined and almost destroyed the potential Tsume and her remarkable nose had as a kunoichi (all gone to waste in a _brothel_ ) then Danzo would leave her to them.

And, for now, he’d also let Tsume have her whimsical flights of fancy and adolescent crush. He could smash them tomorrow as easily as he could at this moment.

oOoOoOo

The next time they rested in another earth pit, Danzo decided there was something more pressing to address than her flights of fancy. Namely, what to say about where he had found Tsume without either of them revealing the Black Ops.

“What do you plan to tell people when you get back?” he asked Tsume. He was seated with his back against the hard wall, and she was curled up against him shivering, the blanket wrapped tightly around them both. “Everyone will to want to know where you’ve been.”

“I’ll tell them it was a mission with Grandmother.” Danzo sighed, and she peeked through the folds of the blanket up at him. “Wh-what?”

“You’ve been gone for sixteen weeks, child. Fourteen weeks ago, your grandmother submitted a report that you were killed in action because you blundered into the enemy’s path, and your body was unrecoverable. Since you don’t have a Bloodline Limit, body retrieval was deemed unimportant. Per the death declaration that the Hokage signed off, you are legally dead.”

He watched as she slowly tucked her head back beneath the blanket, retreating from the world. “Oh. I hope Kakashi didn’t cry too hard. Is he okay?”

“As far as I know. Last I heard, Kakashi is under the dubious care of your Aunt Natsumi while Sakumo is at the war front.”

The blanket still trembled with Tsume’s shivers. She was also sniffling. “Does – does anyone miss me?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes!” She shoved the blanket back and sat upright. Her hair stuck up in all directions like an angry hedgehog and crackled from the wool blanket’s static electricity. “Because if I was missed, then it meant I was wanted. Grandmother told me that I wasn’t unloved, but then I also wasn’t wanted, and you can’t feel loved if you’re not wanted! She…”

Tsume scrubbed at her face, and then fisted the blanket. She turned her face away from Danzo as her shoulders hunched forward. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to come back. I was so surprised, and so happy when you came back for me! Grandmother said that I couldn’t refuse this mission, because if I did, she’d bury me in an unmarked grave. She said, one way or another, she’d be rid of me. And I could see she meant that. And Orochimaru said I’d have to stay there, and I knew that it was going to be one of those thingies that lasted for years, but I wasn’t scared of being there. But it’s a funny feeling. It’s a kick in your gut, can’t breath, oh no everything freezes feeling, to think of people forgetting about me. I know what it’s like to forget things. It’s like… whatever you forget, it stops existing. So if people forgot me, then my existence means nothing, you know?”

“So it does matter,” Danzo concluded as he mentally sorted through her frantic speech.

“Yes. It does. Because… I was doing it for them.” Tsume sniffled a few more times, her toes flexing. She pressed herself more tightly against him, eyes trained on the ground. She added, in a very soft voice on the edge of breaking, “And if no one remembered or cared about me, why would I keep doing that for _years_?” Her knees tightened. “They took away… it hurt. It hurt so much, Danzo.”

Danzo could only imagine the brutality of that life – _I was just **drenched** – twelve years old TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD – _with no end in sight, clinging to a bare thread of hope that eventually someone trustworthy would come with whom she could share her gathered Intel. Alone with her simple thoughts, she was a life wasted.

“That is the nature of the beast when it comes to Black Ops,” Danzo said, reluctantly wrapped his arm around her shoulder in a sort-of hug. He tried to remember how to make his sympathy look genuine. “To be forgotten is to be one of the lucky ones. Black Ops, after all, don’t exist. There is a subdivision in ANBU – and you didn’t hear it from me, or from anyone else – that are known as spooks. Sometimes they operate with sanctioned divisions in Konoha, like Sabotage, and other times, they’re free operators. They are without substance, proof, or truth. Their identities are loose, their integrity nonexistent, and their loyalty absolute. Unless ordered otherwise by the Hokage, spooks are sanctioned with the ultimate freedom in using their own methods to obtain information or sabotage our enemies, even if it means the capture, torture, or murder of fellow Konoha nin by their own hands. The only one who will ever truly know is the Hokage – and, perhaps, their overseer, if it isn’t the Hokage. The rest of us are kept ignorant.

“Can you imagine, Tsume, having to kill Kokoro-chan because she interferes with your Black Ops mission?”

Tsume didn’t look up from where she was huddled, but she responded with a shake of her head. There was a slight arch in her back that indicated she was interested. “Why would I have to? Couldn’t I just tell her the truth and get her out of the way?”

“If it only was that simple, child. ‘If I can fool my friends, I can fool my enemies.’ The more people who know the truth of the Black Ops, the less secure the secret. Secrets are best kept when only two people know the truth, and one of them is dead. The integrity of the mission means more than a single individual’s life. These are not easy missions; there is no room for failure. It’s very noticeable to your enemies if your friends aren’t reacting as if you are the enemy you claim to be. To infiltrate our enemies – who may be quite paranoid and powerful – the spook must _become_ our enemy.”

“Oh! Like the way we had sex, to fool the watchers?” She had lifted her head now, and was looking at him with new understanding… as if, up until now, she hadn’t really known _why_ she had to have sex with people on this mission to sniff out secrets.

Well, this conversation was definitely heading in the direction of the topic he originally wanted to discuss. “Yes. Your actions must be real, and not illusions. You must be _sincere_ , in order to fool the enemy, even if the sincerity means to hurt someone near and dear to you.”

Which was probably why Danzo did his best not to have people near and dear to him, and also why he had so few genuine friendships. 

Damn it – why did all these conversations wind up turning into self-introspection? “And therein is the greatest tragedy of the Black Ops, Tsume. The spooks spend their entire lives known as enemies by the very village they love enough to sacrifice _everything_ for. Sometimes, it is better to be forgotten than it is to be remembered.”

Tsume studied him with wide eyes. “That’s… that’s just not right!” she declared.

“That is what it means to be a shinobi.”

Tsume crossed her arms indignantly. “Then it’s a good thing I’m a kunoichi.”

Danzo tossed his head back and laughed. “Oh, to have your simple, linear thinking. But it all comes down to this: Black Ops do not exist. Your mission – being sold at the brothel, obtaining information – none of it happened. Only your overseer, who is Orochimaru, and the Hokage know the full extent of the mission, and they would deny you in a heartbeat if it meant the success of the mission. Your grandmother and I are aware of it peripherally because we were read in as contacts, but we’re still required to deny your existence and purpose. Even now, your mission doesn’t exist. You were never sent anywhere by anyone. You weren’t in any brothel. You didn’t have sex with me or anyone else, and I most definitely never rescued you.”

Tsume’s face suddenly went pale, and she flopped free of the blanket and scooted back until she was pressed against the wall opposite from him. She riffled hurriedly through her clothes until she brought her kunai up and clenched it tightly. “Then – you never intended to take me back to Konoha, did you?”

“Wait – what?”

“You said I don’t exist. And Grandmother said I was killed in action. How’re you going to explain me coming back from the dead unless you’re just going to kill me after we rescue Kushina-chan?” Then she gasped, babbling over his raised protests. “Except you have to kill me before we get to Kushina-chan, because then she’d know about me! You’re only keeping me alive long enough to get close to her because you need me to track her. You butthead!”

Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tsume, while I admit that the temptation to _throttle_ you is sometimes strong, I will not kill you, nor will I harm you any more than I already have. Why would I have gone through all that trouble of rescuing you?”

She stared at him, her eyes wide. “B-Because it would be too suspicious to Madame Haori if I died after we had sex? I don’t know! How can I trust you?”

“Do I _smell_ like I’m going to hurt you?”

Tsume’s lower lip trembled. So did the kunai. “G-grandmother didn’t always smell, and neither did the men at the brothel. I sometimes don’t know if I can trust my nose.” In a broken whisper, she added, “What if I’m wrong about Kushina?”

Danzo studied Tsume for a moment, and then opened his arms – warily opened up to vulnerability, to allow someone with a sharp weapon come right at his unprotected torso. “Come here, Tsume. On my oath as a Konoha shinobi, I will see you safely back to Konoha, _alive and well_.”

Her eyes shone with wetness. “But can you protect me afterwards, when Grandmother sees me alive after she told everyone I was dead? She wanted me dead. She’s going to be so pissed that I’m not dead.”

His answering smile was wry and cruel. “I hear that onions in meatloaf cover up the scent of poison rather well.”

Tsume didn’t hesitate as she dropped the kunai and threw herself into his arms, curling into a ball, and crying. “She said she l-loved me!”

Danzo rubbed her back. He thought of the way Tsume had cared for Kakashi, and rocked her gently in his arms. “Hush. You’re a genin of Konoha; a kunoichi. This is why good shinobi – and kunoichi – must not show emotions. See how these tears and this hurt are so disruptive?” His voice was barely audible over her sobs. “Now, your grandmother said your body was never found, which doesn’t necessarily prove that you _died_. We can work with that. We’ll say that I heard a rumor that Iwa nin had captured a young Inuzuka tracker and have been trying to brainwash this young Inuzuka into tracking for _them_. I knew that there was only one Inuzuka unaccounted for, and I know that I had to get this young Inuzuka back to Konoha. We’ll say that Iwa nin were waiting for your wounds to heal, and were trying to be kind and generous to you, because kindness will capture a dog’s heart faster than beatings. We’ll come up with a few more details so our stories match, but if people ask questions that go beyond those details, you need to tell them that it’s too traumatizing to remember, and you don’t want to talk about it.”

The crying dwindled into hiccups. “Okay.”

oOoOoOo

It wasn’t until the wind shifted from the northwest to the southeast that Tsume said, almost in a yelp, “I smell Namikaze Minato!” Then, after a couple of deep breaths, and in a much quieter voice, “Whoa, he’s good. If I didn’t also catch the scents of his weapons on him, I never would’ve noticed that he was even here. Well, I would at a hundred percent, but not thirty.”

Danzo said nothing as they bound through one of Lightning’s boreal forests; the slim pine and larch trees didn’t have sturdy branches to create a highway in the sky for ninja like the forests in Fire. They had to move through the underbrush, which made silent movement next to impossible with the dry lichen and pine needles that covered the forest bed. Thorns from the tangled underbrush tore the back of his hands and Tsume’s bare legs bloody.

“He’s by himself though. His team is further back by, wow, a full day’s worth of hard travel? Fifty kilometers, I guess? And Jiraiya isn’t with either group. But Minato’s following Kushina-chan at a really fast pace, and I bet he’s going to try rescuing her! That meant she wasn’t forgotten like me!”

Danzo didn’t think that one harebrained genin whom Tsume had always described in her letters as “a mooncalf of a weenie” technically qualified as a dispatched retrieval from Konoha. But it did beg the questions of how Jiraiya’s student managed to get so far into enemy territory alone, and how bad things were that Konoha truly was reduced to sending one harebrained genin after their very own jinchuuriki.

Then again, this was the same Konoha that had sold Tsume to a brothel, so the roadmap to figure out appropriate responses to certain situations was hardly usable, at this point in the war.

He didn’t like Jiraiya as a person nearly as much as he liked Sakumo or Hiruzen. Jiraiya, like Sakumo and Hiruzen, was just so… so noble, obnoxiously optimistic, kind and _genuine_. Jiraiya was just far too good to be true – no one could be that constantly cheerful and optimistic without being a deranged, sadistic sociopath. On the other hand, Danzo knew that he couldn’t just very well leave Jiraiya’s student to wander alone in the woods of Lightning; that student was, after all, Konoha. “Where is he?” Danzo asked. He saw Tsume’s arm extend in front of him at an angle, finger pointed steadily.

“That way. I think six kilometers?”

Danzo had spent the last two days focusing on teaching Tsume how to measure distance with her sense of smell, which probably meant that he probably had another fifteen to eighteen kilometers to run before finally meeting up with Minato. “How far away is Kushina?”

“She’s about fifteen kilometers that way.” The arm swiveled. So he had at least another forty or fifty kilometers to go before he could finally turn around and head to the relative direction of _home._ “But the Kumo nin are moving slower than Minato. Probably,” her voice became indignant, “because they’ve got Kushina-chan in _chains._ ”

Danzo jumped over a few fallen logs covered with thick layers of moss, and then the deep gully that seemed to pop out of nowhere. They landed safely on the other side, and he heard Tsume’s sharp intake of air as a branch whipped across her cheek. When she hurriedly moved her hand upward but couldn’t stop the sticky dribble of blood down the back of Danzo’s neck, he knew that the branch must have flayed her cheek open wide. He felt her chakra flare. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to heal this cut—”

“What?” Danzo skidded to a halt and twisted Tsume off his back before she could finish her explanation. Her eyes were wide and her hand was pasted to her cheek. There was a muddy green glow on her palm as he abruptly yanked the hand away. He could see that the blood had clotted, but thankfully the wound wasn’t closed – poorly-performed healing could result in trapped infection, severe scaring, chakra burns around the surrounding flesh, necrosis, and worse.

He wasn’t surprised that she had the aptitude for healing – Inuzuka offspring had notoriously good chakra control that developed early and was exercised often, and the trackers received training to become medics because they were often the first to find their wounded companions. They were rarely classified as med nin, however, given how often the Inuzuka engaged the enemy willy-nilly like med nin weren’t allowed to, unless one’s name was Tsunade. However, the point was that the others had training. “I forbid it. Healing is not something you are permitted to perform on yourself or anyone else without experience!”

Having made his point, Danzo pulled Tsume onto his back again and resumed running.

Tsume’s little fist smacked him in the shoulder, and Danzo retaliated by pinching her hip. “Ow, you butthead! I do too have some training! Madame Kai showed me how to close wounds on myself in case I was bleeding really badly and she couldn’t help me immediately! She said I had a little bit of a knack, and she always trained any girl with any knack how to heal since it saved her the energy. And I could only heal myself when she was there though, because she said it had to be a supervised activity. I actually got pretty good with it, since I had to practice just about every night on myself.”

Well, shit.

Somehow, Tsume managed to wrangle up some training on healing techniques as a med nin while in the midst of paranoid enemies who had killed all the other kunoichi that Konoha had attempted to smuggle in for Intel. And, based on how casually she spoke of doing it, Tsume apparently didn’t realize just how extremely dangerous that was, how easily those paranoid enemies could’ve found and exterminated her, just as they had the previous twelve kunoichi.

Danzo didn’t know if he should be proud of Tsume for managing to stay alive, or exasperated at her obliviousness.

“We need to meet up with Minato before he does anything. I can’t protect you both while trying to rescue Kushina at the same time.”

“I can too take care of myself!”

He didn’t think she knew how to take care of herself on the battlefield as well as she could in bed. “I’m well aware of how you take care of yourself, but I intend to kill every single non-Konoha nin, and I’d rather you didn’t get caught in the middle.”

Tsume hunched low on his back and sulked as Danzo shifted directions, towards Namikaze Minato.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is curious, this is the science article I read that made me wonder of what would happen if you had a ninja who was incapable of fear. It is about a woman with a damaged amygdala.  
> https://www.wired.com/2010/12/fear-brain-amygdala/
> 
> This science article, however, indicates that even if the people without a functioning amygdala can still feel panic in certain situations.   
> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-can-feel-terror-even-if-they-lack-brains-fear-center/
> 
> This guy actually breaks down the function for the amygdala as possibly creating non-consious fear.  
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/i-got-mind-tell-you/201508/the-amygdala-is-not-the-brains-fear-center
> 
> The Biology of Fear breaks down, well, fear, much more thoroughly.  
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3595162/
> 
> Now, in the world of Naruto, where people can heal each other with chakra and you can store chakra constructs within a human vessel, I think it may be safe to say that if the Author assumes that Tsume cannot feel fear but is still able to experience panic in a set of very narrow instances, then it's not a Plot Hole. (Right?) Lack of fear doesn't preclude Tsume from jumping to conclusions and overreacting.


	12. Alpha Years - Chapter Nine

Minato must’ve sensed their approach, since he waited for their arrival, standing still beside an old tree long hollowed out by termites. A kunai was in his left hand and his right hand was balanced lightly against his hip. He blended into his surroundings with his simple green long-sleeved shirt and brown ninja pants, his torso wrapped with a sleeveless multi-pocketed green and dark gray cameo vest. His face was carefully blank but he didn’t smell surprised when Danzo landed in front of him.

“Hi, Minato!” There was no doubting Minato’s personal scent that reminded Tsume of autumn campfires and salted apples. Tsume waved from Danzo’s back, until Danzo shoved her off and she landed on the pine needle-covered ground. Unbothered by Danzo’s abruptness – she knew that the intimacy they had shared in the last week was not something he wanted advertised to the entire world, and she could respect that – Tsume immediately bounced to her feet. It was the sight of _Tsume_ that made Minato’s jaw drop open and surprise color his scent. “How come you’re the only one tracking Kushina-chan? Where’s everyone else?”

“How did—” Minato’s gaze fluttered from Danzo to Tsume, then his body tensed with a spike of fear. He dropped into a crouch and pointed his kunai at them. “Prove your identity! Neither of you are wearing your forehead protectors.” Tsume’s hands flew to her forehead, which was still bare. She remembered again with a resentful twinge that she never received one in the first place. She dragged her hands from her forehead to her cheeks, accurately away of how bare they always were. She didn’t know what she resented most: the absence of her clan’s birthright that was always denied to her, or than the absence of the forehead protector she struggled so hard to earn.

Danzo looked around. “Where’s the rest of your team? It’s unlike Jiraiya to let his genin wander around in enemy territory unsupervised. Unless… Ah, you were promoted to chuunin just a month ago, weren’t you?”

Tsume gasped. “No way! Minato got out of the academy the same time I did and he’s already chuunin? I bet there was a mistake. Had to be a mistake.” She glared at Minato. “How can _you_ be a chuunin when you just graduated a genin four months ago like me?”

Danzo shrugged. “Field promotions are not hard to come by in war.” His gaze narrowed dangerously as a hard light glinted in them. “Especially when the genin is an unparalleled prodigy.”

“That’s not fair!” Tsume’s arms spun in the air as she bounced from foot to foot. She didn’t even have a forehead protector and Minato had already received a promotion? What did _she_ get for her undercover S-rank mission, besides antibiotics last month for chlamydia? “Mooncalf is an even bigger airhead than I am!”

Minato sighed and straightened. “And there went any and all doubt that you aren’t Inuzuka Tsume.”

Tsume shook a fist at him. “Of course I am! Who else would I be?”

“Who would _want_ to be her?” Danzo muttered. Then he cuffed her with the sharp command to be quiet. Tsume wondered how much trouble she’d be if she kicked Danzo in the shin.

Minato tilted his head to the side. “There’s that, too, I suppose.” Probably a lot less trouble than kicking Minato, who was also usually polite enough to stand still long enough for Tsume to at least aim her foot. “You must be here to assist in the rescue of Uzumaki.”

“Yeah!” Tsume bounced on the balls of her feet again, feeling antsy with all her bundled up energy spilling through her arms and legs. “We were able to follow Kushina-chan’s scent from Earth, but how did you find her?”

Minato pointed at a thin red strand that hung from a bramble bush. “Kushina-san has been leaving a trail. There are very few things in nature as red as her hair. I’ve been following the last two days, ever since I crossed the trail. There’s actually thirty Konoha nin – that I know of – actively searching for Uzumaki Kushina, but so far I’m the only one who’s found and followed her trail. I’ve been on the lookout to report if I crossed paths with other units, but the Kumo nin have been skillful in dodging Konoha allies, and I didn’t want to lose the trail. I _will_ rescue Kushina at the first viable opportunity.”

At least two days of following a _trail_ of red hair? Tsume wondered with horror if Kushina had any of her glorious hair left.

“How did she get captured?”

“My understanding is that Kushina and her team were caught in a blast zone a week prior; in the confusion, Kushina was captured and carried off by the Kumo nin. We broke through the enemy ranks on the other side of the blast zone four days ago, and search for her has been high priority, even though our forces are spread thin and weakening.”

Tsume wondered what was so important that made Kushina a high priority (not that she disagreed with the importance of rescuing one of her best friends), and then felt guilty once again for the delay in getting her Intel to Orochimaru.

“We rescue Uzumaki Kushina tonight,” Danzo announced with a voice that was flatter than any he had used when talking to Tsume. Danzo turned to her. “How far ahead is Uzumaki?”

Kushina’s personal scent of sun-warmed soil and fishcake was prevalent in Tsume’s nose. The hair helped. Distance was still proving to be an elusive calculation, but hopefully Danzo was right when he said it would come with time and lots of practice. “She’s about… twenty kilometers?” It helped that Danzo had taken the time to explain distance between their own stopping points, offering her a reference to match against strengths of scents. She just wasn’t very good at it still, and even worse at remembering everything that Danzo had tried to teach her.

Danzo sighed, and Tsume tried not to feel like a disappointment. She desperately found herself wishing that she didn’t give anyone reason to sigh when she described scent’s distance. Being able to tell people the many details otherwise unknown to any other nose didn’t do any good if you couldn’t also tell just how far away or how old the scent was. She felt little and inadequate. “If we traveled at the speed we’ve been going at, and Kushina-chan and her captors don’t change pace, we’d actually meet up with them in about three hours.” Of _that_ she was certain. She felt a little tension ease from her shoulders as Danzo’s expression shifted. He studied the skies overhead.

“Which means we’d be upon them just as dusk is setting – about the time they’re making camp. This could be to our advantage. Come closer, boy, I have an idea.” They ducked their heads together, and a plan was quickly created.

oOoOoOo

A plan, Tsume thought with a resentful and impatient kick at an innocent clod of dirt, that left _her_ beyond the perimeters, away from the fighting and Kushina-chan! Oh, the excuses Danzo and Minato had given her were pretty ones, all dressed up on reason and garnished with common sense. “You’ve spent so much time recovering from your wounds, you don’t have the stamina or strength,” Danzo had said, every bit as blunt and as cold as he had been when she was ten years old with baby Kakashi was in her arms and Kuromaru between her ankles.

“The goal is to be in and out of there as quick as possible with Kushina-san,” Minato’s voice was far kinder than Danzo’s. “The fewer people involved, the more swiftly we can move.”

“Besides, Danzo had added with a hint of humor, “you’re not even wearing shoes. It’s going to be hard enough for you to run away, much less fight the enemy.”

She paused and wiggled her toes in thought. They did kinda ache from kicking the clod of dirt, but it wasn’t like her feet were _bare_. She wore six pairs of socks and some bark to protect them from injury. She would’ve had eight pairs, if two hadn’t been borrowed to double up as gloves. She supposed her stamina probably sucked right now, though. Granted, Danzo hadn’t permitted her to try _running_ since her own rescue, mainly because there was no way she would’ve been able to keep up with the pace he had set, even before the sedentary effect a couple of months in the brothel had on her, so she hadn’t exactly had a chance to improve.

With a huff, Tsume sat on an old, broken stump that was rotted and covered with a thick layer of lichen. Danzo’s pack, still on her back, creaked with her movement.

She framed her jaw with one hand, since she grasped Danzo’s kunai in the other, and drew in deep breaths. It was wasn’t hard to tell what Danzo and Minato were doing just by scent alone, even when they masked their chakra signatures to near invisibility. They were two or three kilometers away, hovering around the parameter of the nine Kumo nin and Kushina. The Kumo nins’ scents were casual and relaxed; they had evaded discovery by enemy forces, successfully traveling through the heart of their allies’ lands without notice, and expected no trouble now that they had entered their country of Lightning. Kushina smelled of worry and hunger, but that was no different from the last few days.

The scent of one Kumo nin shifted as it blundered across Danzo’s path – from fresh and constant, to static, like the scent would never be regenerated. Since none of the other scents shifted, she knew Danzo’s first kill had have gone unnoticed. She enjoyed Danzo’s scent – still dark, but there was an added layer that sent a thrill zipping up and down her spine, the same thrill that made her throw on as many extra layers of clothes she could find when she smelled him approach the Palace a second time. She didn’t tell him the extra clothes were because she felt safer if there were a thicker barrier between them that _might_ deflect a thrown blade. _Danger_ , she realized suddenly. She explored the feeling for a moment, turning it over in her head and heart. Nope; she wasn’t scared. She was…. It wasn’t quite being wary. It was more of one predator recognizing another, stronger predator.

Maybe, Tsume thought, maybe it was wariness, and she was just now able to label this particular emotion.

Minato’s scent approached closer to Kushina’s as another Kumo nin’s went static. The wind suddenly came up, gusting hard from the south. It carried a scent of toad on it. Momentarily distracted, Tsume straightened and turned her awareness southward. The combined scent of toad and oil-stained paper was the only hint of someone coming – Jiraiya. She _could_ catch an actual whiff of him once she searched for faint undertones. Tsume wondered how Jiraiya managed to hide his personal scent so well (didn’t wonder _why_ he would, it seemed very smart to Tsume to erase one’s presence as much as possible, because the Inuzuka clan couldn’t the only ninja clan out there with magnified senses), and if he hadn’t also taught Minato a useful trick or two. Then again, she was only smelling at thirty percent of her allowed max. She made a mental note to ask Jiraiya if he wouldn’t also teach her, because that would be a totally awesome skill if no one could track _her_.

The Kumo nins’ scents all immediately shifted and flared – they stank of adrenaline and anger. Two more went static, and Minato and Kushina’s scents were now rapidly moving in her direction. Much faster than what she could do. Grip tightening on the kunai as she felt her heart pounding hard from the sudden rush of adrenaline, Tsume leapt to her feet and immediately sprinted towards Jiraiya’s scent. The pack banged heavily against her lower back with each bounding stride.

Her socks quickly became tangled with the underbrush and pine cones. After tripping once because the sock got caught, Tsume impatiently yanked everything off her feet and resumed her mad dash. Her limbs felt loose and long. Without the various layers protecting her feet, she was keenly aware of every single pine cone, rock, needle, and thorn she stepped on. She could barely see in the dark, just enough to dodge the really large obstacles. With a clench of her jaw, Tsume shifted chakra away from her nose to her legs and feet, circulating them, trying to harden the layers of skin like she coaxed skin cells together to heal a laceration.

Her olfaction abruptly dropped from thirty percent to fifteen, just as her speed gained an unexpected boost as each leaping bound carried her farther and faster. _Awesome._ While practicing the tree-walking with Kakashi and Kuromaru, she had figured out how to split the flow of chakra between her nose and her feet without causing a disruption to either, but she hadn’t actually realized before this that the increased chakra to her lower limbs did more than just make her cling to different surfaces. 

If she could make her feet and legs faster, could she see better? Tsume shifted chakra to her eyes, and her olfaction dropped down to five percent. Visual perception suddenly sharpened, lines and objects far more clear even though it didn’t seem any brighter by intensity of light or color. She ducked a branch running, pleased that she could avoid being clobbered in the face.

Three Kumo scents surrounded Danzo’s; a fourth followed fast behind Minato and Kushina’s. Tsume readied her kunai, palm slick with sweat. Despite her increased speed, Minato managed to catch up easily. He carried Kushina bridal-style since her hands were bound tightly in front of her, and a small length of chain hung between the manacles on her ankles. The chains clanked as loudly as their harsh breathing and the crunching pine needles beneath their feet. Tsume was pleased to see that Kushina’s hair was mostly intact despite being greasy and tangled.

Kushina’s expression, which was already stunned (probably from her rescue), shifted into amazement as they drew up beside Tsume. “Oh! I knew you were alive!” Kushina bounced slightly in her excitement, her shifting weight unexpectedly making Minato briefly stumble. “None of us believed for a second that you were dead!”

“I’ll break her bonds,” Tsume told Minato as a warm, fuzzy feeling tickled the inside of her chest, “if you think you can take the Kumo nin following us.”

“What about Danzo-sensei?”

Tsume suddenly wondered why it never occurred to her to attach an honorific to Danzo’s name. She mentally cringed when she realized in a flash that she was probably in big trouble for not doing so, and that thought in the next moment that Danzo sure had been awfully nice to her since the brothel. Probably because there weren’t any witnesses that he’d otherwise require killing. She forced more chakra into her nose, instead of shifting it from her limbs. “He’s still tangled with two living shinobi. The one following us is going to catch up, because I can’t run any faster, and you’re probably a better fighter than I am.”

“No ‘probably’ about that, Tsume-san.”

She flushed red, even though Minato’s voice and scent indicated that he was just being matter-of-fact without any arrogance – that was just the sort of person Minato was; forward and honest, but not arrogant. He skidded to a halt and set Kushina down on the ground with a strange gentleness. “Give me your kunai – I gave most of my weapons to Danzo and only kept one.” Tsume did so without hesitation. With a kunai balanced in each hand, Minato whipped around on his heel and threw himself headlong just as the Kumo nin shunshined through the underbrush. Sparks flew from blades as Minato blocked the Kumo nin’s sword with one kunai, skidded low between the nin’s legs, and used his and the nin’s momentum to thrust the other kunai deep and long. Intestines spilled on top of Minato and all Tsume could suddenly smell was acidic gastric fluids and blood.

Tsume made very short of the rope that tied Kushina’s wrists together by biting and sawing. With claws and teeth nearly as sharp as a blade, the rope was off in three seconds – enough time that Minato jerked sideways from the Kumo nin’s downward jab to avoid being skewered. Despite the entrails hanging from the Kumo nin’s parted abdomen, the enemy still fought on with no loss of strength or speed, fueled by adrenaline and determination to take as many along to hell as possible.

Flooding her hands with the remaining bulk of her chakra reserves, Tsume grasped the chains between Kushina’s feet and yanked with all her might. Metal links shattered beneath her unexpected strength. Once she felt the loss of tension in her grip, Tsume whirled around from Kushina and forced more chakra into her legs as she pounced across the woods to the back of the Kumo nin. She saw Minato deflect another sword swing, wincing as the force of the deflection sent shockwaves through his smaller arm. Tsume flashed across the world so quickly she didn’t have time to think more than _I can too fight, Danzo!_ Hands still flooded with chakra, Tsume instinctively punched the Kumo nin’s spine open-handed with extended claws, and yanked.

Multiple thoughts exploded all at once in her mind – _I’m attacking – I don’t have a forehead protector – Grandmother said I’m a worthless meat shield – my body is a weapon –_ and the crack of splintering bone and wet tearing of flesh was horrendously loud despite the pounding in her ears. As the Kumo nin’s body dropped all akimbo on top of Minato, like a Suna puppet losing its chakra strings, it took a bewildering second for Tsume to realize she was holding a bloody length of vertebrae, held together by shredded muscle, thick white tendons and ligaments, and filament nerve fibers. Minato floundered a moment before working his way free from beneath the body without losing his grip on either kunai. His head and torso were plastered with various body fluids that steamed in the cool air. His eyes were wide as he glanced between Kushina and Tsume, looking gratified that neither was injured.

Actually, he just looked horrified at Tsume. Nothing unusual about _that_ – Minato regularly looked horrified at her at the Academy, especially before the Hokage got around to banning blows to genitalia.

Tsume stopped moving – at least she thought she did, even though her legs trembled – but the world kept spinning just like that morning when Danzo made her increase her olfaction to the allowed maximum limit. She looked away from the dead Kumo nin. “Gosh. I think he’s finally dead.” She looked at the bones in her hand, wondering if she should drop them or just hold on.

“That’s nice,” Minato said, shuddering as he tried to find a clean space on his vest and shirt.

“Is everyone all right?” Kushina asked as she joined their sides. She flinched back from the dead nin and Tsume. “Oh, _yuck_. That was Izu.” She slapped a hand over her mouth, her next words almost too muffled to understand, “I’m going to be sick.”

Tsume felt lightheaded and giddy as the world kept spinning all around her head, the ground flipping side-to-side like a seesaw on the playground back home. “This is so cool!” Tsume decided, waving the vertebrae in the air. The bones clacked as she was suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion, and her arms dropped limp to her sides. Kushina vomited in the bushes. The pack on Tsume’s back felt like someone dumped a few boulders inside of it when she wasn’t looking. The strip of torn red vest was drenched and her arm was coated red. “Wait – how did I manage to _do_ this?”

Minato reached over and grabbed the hem of one of her yukata. “Excuse my intrusion,” he murmured as he swiped his face clean. “I don’t want gastric fluid to get in my eyes. How’s Danzo-sensei doing?”

Tsume refocused her chakra to her nose, ignoring the stabbing pain of cramping muscles in her arms and legs, and the tremor that shook her legs. The world spun faster all around her, colored dots joining the spin. Gagging at the overwhelming stink, she said, “He’s still tangled with one living nin.”

“We need to start running now.”

Tsume pointed with the spine – her hand throbbed. Her head tilted to her left shoulder against her accord. “Go that way. I could smell Jiraiya-sensei coming.”

“That’s good,” Minato said with a grim voice. His eyes flickered to Kushina. “Let’s run.”

It took a moment for Tsume to realize that she was supposed to follow after them, so she hurried to catch up, flooding her legs and feet with chakra again – she didn’t seem to have a lot of chakra to do any more flooding with, though. Her arms now felt shaky and weak, and her right hand clamped tight around the vertebrae in an unrelenting, agonizing muscle spasm. She stumbled twice over different fallen logs, and nearly fell backwards from the weight of the pack even though she was running forward.

Her companions surrounded her; Minato followed behind to cover Tsume’s back as Kushina ran at Tsume’s left side, one hand under Tsume’s armpit to right her immediately the next time Tsume stumbled. Brambles whipped against their bodies, occasionally catching the vertebrae in Tsume’s right hand. She raised it above her head so it wouldn’t snag. Her shoulder locked as agony lanced through it.

“That’s creepy,” Kushina told Tsume, whipping her face so the curtain of gloriously rich red hair remained out of her eyes. It was the same color of blood, Tsume thought. Like the blood that coated the arm and vertebrae that Kushina didn’t want to touch. _I have a flag! Weeee!_ It wasn’t white or cloth, but she bet it would draw someone’s eye!

The weakness in Tsume’s arms seemed to move through her body. Her shoulder unlocked and her arm dropped flopping to her side, hand still clamped tight in a spasm. Each gasping breath tore at her throat as the dots became large blotches of black, gray, and red. A tugging stitch developed in her side. Her head felt like it should be rolling loosely on her neck. Tsume suddenly wanted to curl up against Kushina and sleep. But she forced herself not to slow any further, to push more chakra into her limbs, to pick her aching feet up every bit as high as they needed to go despite the screaming agony in her thighs and calves, because she _wasn’t_ just a worthless meat suit, _wasn’t_ just a warm body for a man to dip his cock into. She just _wasn’t._

Kushina’s voice was shrill in Tsume’s ear. “Dip his _what_?” Tsume dimly felt Kushina’s fingers lock tightly around her arm. The blotches in her vision were getting awfully big, and what little ground she could see through them felt so far away, like she was falling except it was a crash forward.

“Stinks,” Tsume muttered, trying to focus her thoughts. They kept spinning off in all directions, half a thought following a shard of a memory chasing the hint of a scent, round and round like the forest floor.

“Sorry.” Mooncalf Weenie-san even managed to sound like he meant it.

“You too, but I… I meant the darn… toad.”

“What toad?”

“Minato – it’s Tsume-chan’s chakra –”

Tsume’s legs suddenly stopped working and she pitched forward, dragging Kushina down with her into a face full of stabbing pine needles. The pack smothered like another impossibly heavy weight. She didn’t mean to – Tsume never wanted to be a weight dragging anyone down. Her legs twitched as she tried to make them behave. Stupid legs. The blotches were overtaking her vision now, filling it up until there was nothing to see but a horrendously ugly splotchy red mixed in with black and steel gray. Hands tugged at Danzo’s pack and her clothes. “N-no.” She wasn’t ready, too soon after the last client.

“—she doesn’t _have any_ —”

Tsume wanted to scream, but couldn’t. She was weak – too weak, just like Grandmother was always saying. She was good at fucking up. And fucking, good little whore, good little bitch. The world shifted violently on its axis –she overdid it again exploring the world, skipping through the Nara forest that readily opened itself up to her, sniffing out all the marvelous scents and the dark, dark man who smelled of so many different places and had pretty ruby eyes that spun fast and made the world also spin faster all around – “ _you know what they say about curiosity and cats”_ – and there was red heat in her vision, choking red in her mouth and nose and her head cracked open like a dropped melon.

More hands grabbed at her clothes and her arms – no, Madame Kai hadn’t healed her yet. She wasn’t _ready_. Blood drenched her legs and she felt torn in half all over again, split down the middle with her insides pounded to mush because it didn’t fit and he forced it to fit –“ _the blood makes it easier to_ **_slide_**.”

“…not ready, sheets are too bloody.”

Everything was red, all the wrong red and it was so so so hard to forgot, why did she have to remember _that_ – “ _And I say this as a professional mind-reader”_ – to shove it _all_ in the box. Red like ruby eyes red like her sheets red like her thighs, red everywhere except a curtain of marvelous hair, red that kept coming even though she shrieked and kicked and the man kept thrusting thrusting splitting her in half splitting the world her head red red red drenched pools blood she only smelled blood had to smell _more_ than blood for Konoha had to remember more remember why why why her what did she ever _do_ to deserve – “ _I have seen the void – it is inside of me_ ” – fill the void and spill her insides onto the sheets red everywhere red on Madame Kai’s hands red in the bucket red on the hook —

_Dark, old exploding tags and rusting kunai accidentally left out in the rain_. The scent of home, of being guarded, of Danzo flooded her nose, a cloying odor that she knew would protect her like no one had bothered to before, and she dragged it with her into the dark void that swallowed her whole, and that was… nice.

oOoOoOo

Tsume mercifully passed out from severe chakra exhaustion the moment Danzo scooped her out of Minato’s arms. He mentally cursed himself for being unaware of how little chakra she possessed, no matter how well disguised by the seal it had been – her control was remarkably good for her age, especially to maintain a steady level at her nose every moment of her existence – so he had never really given thought to her _actual_ levels.

Minato’s face was filled with genuine concern. “You’re injured, Danzo-sensei. I can carry her for you.”

Danzo paused long enough to yank his pack off of Tsume’s back and shove it into Kushina’s arms, nearly knocking her out of breath. He made sure Tsume’s limp body – limp except for her right hand, and where the hell did she manage to get a fucking _spine_? That was the last time he ever left her alone without adult supervision – was slung comfortably over his shoulder. He favored his right leg, where a Kumo nin had taken advantage of Danzo’s blind side and managed to sunk a kunai deep in the back of his right thigh, not quite hamstringing him. “No. Because I’m wounded, I need you to be as free as possible to fight, just in case.”

“Oh. Right, sir.” Minato nodded his head south. “Tsume said she could smell Jiraiya-sensei from that direction.”

Now there was a man Danzo would give his eyeteeth to have protecting his back and blind side right now, no matter his personal dislike for Jiraiya. “Then we know he’s coming. Did she say how far away he is?”

“No, sir.”

“Did she say anything about anyone following us?”

“She only said that you were still fighting with one living Kumo nin.” Since Tsume hadn’t made any mention of other approaching forces earlier, Danzo figured that the fallen bodies were unlikely to be discovered by other Kumo forces or their allies until at least dawning light. Still, good fortune favored the ready, and he wasn’t ready.

“We run.” Danzo’s slapdash patch job on his hamstring would need to hold until they met up with Jiraiya.

Despite the heavy limp and the dead weight on his shoulder, he initially set a pace that kept Minato and Kushina struggling to keep up, and braced his wounded hamstring with chakra so it wouldn’t rupture completely. He monitored the other adolescents’ current levels of chakra without too much worry, since he had no intention of carrying another kid passed out from exhaustion. Kushina, thanks to the nine-tailed fox demon and her Uzumaki genes, was a chakra juggernaut. And, from what he could tell with Minato as the boy cloaked himself with natural chakra (what has Jiraiya been teaching that brat?) to lessen chance of detection despite the clinging stench of ruptured body fluids, Minato’s reserves could put most jounin to shame.

The skies overhead were bright from the full moon, making it dangerous to navigate the woods, but not quite treacherous. Danzo’s pace slowed after Kushina tripped and tweaked her ankle. Her ankle was healed and no worse for wear thirty minutes later, but he maintained the slower pace because Minato was giving Kushina an appraising look. After two hours of steady running, their paths finally crossed with Jiraiya.

Danzo didn’t even blink as Jiraiya flashed to his side, his hair gray beneath the moonlight, and matched them step for step. “Are we being followed?” Danzo asked, not bothering to waste his breath on a greeting.

“No, but if you keep running in this direction, you’re going to stumble on Sora shinobi camping underground. Follow me this way.” Jiraiya herded them westward. “I understand that you were sent to Earth for a mission, and that Tsume was dead.”

“Had to obtain Intel from a spy up there. Coming back, I came across a squad of Iwa nin who had captured Tsume and were trying to convince her to switch to their sides. I pulled her out of there and brought her along with me. Can’t have an Inuzuka in the enemy hands.” There, that was a quick explanation to the remaining two children on why their classmate was still alive, despite a public death declaration.

Jiraiya’s smile was more teeth than anything else. “Not with a nose like that. So that’s the story, huh.”

“That’s the story. Although at the first chance we have, you _must_ look at a seal that was forced on Tsume. My temporary modifications aren’t going to hold forever.” The seal was probably the only reason Tsume was out cold from chakra exhaustion, instead of comatose from chakra depletion. The chakra that fed the seal despite the temporary modifications was instead being redirected to prevent sudden organ failure. But he had no idea if that meant his modifications had collapsed without the chakra to maintain them, and he didn’t want Tsume’s seal to flare awake with him _and_ Jiraiya within its snare.

Danzo felt chakra coil like a waiting viper as Jiraiya’s eyes glittered. Jiraiya’s voice dropped into a whisper that wouldn’t be overhead by Kushina and Minato, following at their heels. “Is that the _only_ thing that was forced on her?”

Danzo knew that he would reach Grass alive with the Intel even if Jiraiya learned of what Danzo had done. And Jiraiya _would_ learn with one look at the seal. But whether Danzo would be _remain_ alive once the war ended remained to be seen. Danzo wouldn’t lie to Jiraiya though, and refused to cowardly and shamefully minimize his own involvement. “I wish it was.” 

“Ah.” Jiraiya remained silent for a while, but eventually he gave in to a different curiosity. He raised his voice to be heard by the other two children. “So, uh, just why is Tsume-chan holding someone’s bloody _spine_ in her bare hand?”

Minato volunteered the information in a voice free of inflection, as if reciting a report. “She tore it out of the Kumo nin that I was fighting. He was very persistent, even after I gutted him, but thankfully couldn’t maintain without a spine.”

Jiraiya recovered his surprised stumble rather well in the dark. “She… you…” He coughed. “Danzo, did I just hear correctly that our cute little gutsy shinobi disemboweled _and_ deboned an enemy nin? What about _you_?” He glanced over his shoulder at Kushina. “Did you defenestrate the poor guy on top of everything else?”

Danzo felt the glare that Kushina answered with. “Don’t be stupid, sensei. Where would I get the window to toss the body out of?” Kushina was quick in adding her own description of the fight, but seemed somewhat distracted.

Jiraiya whistled low. “Wow, I’m really proud of you kids.” He reached behind and ruffled Minato’s hair. “Squicked out of my mind, but really proud. _Hold_!” They all skidded to a stop at his command. Jiraiya made one set of hand seals, and a miniature waterfall suddenly drenched Minato. “You _stink_ , and your hair is _sticky_.”

Minato sighed and looked like a resigned, albeit drenched, puppy. “Yes, sensei.”

“Can’t have you alerting any enemies when they’re downwind of you.”

Miinato shivered violently in the cold. “No, sensei.”

Minato, Danzo realized, as the boy scrubbed at his hair, vest, and hands without complaint under the multiple waterfalls that Jiraiya produced in the cold night, had the patience of a saint.

Jiraiya was silent afterwards, leading them across the darkened countryside. They crossed the border of Lightning in the dark, silently entering Bear Country. Boreal forests gave way to deciduous glades where the crunch of bright orange, red, and golden fallen leaves was slightly louder beneath their feet than red and brown needles.

Jiraiya eventually led them to a cliff positioned high overhead in the sheer rock face, overlooking a roaring waterfall. Minato and Danzo scaled the cliff without problem, using chakra to climb despite the water-slick stone. Kushina had to cling to Jiraiya’s back, her button nose wrinkled as she tried not to press her face against his wild white hair. She didn’t have the control to stick to the slick stone.

It was nearing dawn when they finally reached the cave, the skies lighting up in rich shades of purple, pink, and orange. The air was filled with rainbows of light and color as the sun’s rays danced across the floating spray from the waterfalls. The color of the cave walls in the gaining light was a slate blue with sparkling-white ribbons of quartz.

Jiraiya summoned a toad as a sentry, placed multiple layers of genjutsu on the cliff entrance to disguise it from notice, and then followed up with a technique that dulled the waterfall’s deafening roar inside the cave to a distant hum.

As Danzo carried Tsume further back into the cave, Kushina stumbled after him. “D-Danzo-sensei, wait!” She pointed at Minato, who had started to follow after. “ _Sit still_!” Minato abruptly sat, his legs folding beneath with an expression of surprise plastered on his face.

Danzo didn’t wait as he carried Tsume around the corner and gently propped her limp body on the floor that was worn smooth from water over many years. “What is it?” Danzo asked as he dropped his own aching body beside Tsume’s, fingers pressing against the bloody bandages that wrapped his thigh.

“I…I need to say this now, before I lose courage.” Kushina stood before him, all gaunt and gangly – just like Tsume had when he first saw her, although Kushina’s face was alive with fear while Tsume’s had just been curious. She knotted her hands, twisting her fingers around each other. “I was never hurt with the Kumo nin. Well, they cuffed me a few times, especially when I tried to escape in the beginning, but they gave me food and water, and one even gave me his own bedroll to sleep on.”

Danzo leaned his back against the cold stone, damp with condensation from the waterfall. “That was unusually kind of them, although I’m sure it was very frightening to be trapped and dragged along by the enemy, not knowing what awaited you at the end of your journey.”

Kushina shook her head. She nervously undid the buckles that secured his pack to her back, and handed it to him. She clenched her hands into fists as her face burned bright red. “It’s not about me though, sir. They never hurt me. I don’t…. I don’t know if Tsume-chan told you anything, but before you got to us and she passed out, before she started squeaking like she was trying to breathe through a straw, I heard her say…” Kushina’s expression collapsed into pain and embarrassment, mingled with the earlier fear. She swallowed a few times and she blinked rapidly as moisture glimmered in her eyes. She kept looking between Danzo and Tsume. Jiraiya hovered behind her silently, arms crossed and face stern. “I heard her say…” She hesitated again, twisting her fingers, this time with more visible embarrassment.

Danzo scrubbed his face with a tired hand. He shoved the pack behind him, and leaned back against it. “You heard Tsume imply, if not say outright, that she had been raped.” He kept his gaze focused on Kushina despite the sudden spike in Jiraiya’s chakra.

Kushina bit her lip and nodded her head vigorously. Her shoulders hunched like she could feel the weight of Jiraiya’s presence. As if Danzo’s directness loosened the hold of embarrassment on her tongue, Kushina said hurriedly, “She said it was too soon to dip his… his cock in her, she wasn’t ready, that her sheets were bloody.” She trembled, swiped at the tears dribbling out of her eyes, and choked back a sob. “Tsume-chan… Tsume-chan was hurt, even though I never was. She was hurt really bad! What did they – how do we help her?”

Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t his place to tell Kushina what happened to Tsume, especially when the mission in its entirety was as classified as the demon Kushina hosted. He didn’t think there was _ever_ a place to tell a barely-turned-eleven year old girl the finer details of rape, or that Tsume would ever be willing to share her experience with the young friend she wanted desperately to save and protect – but he also couldn’t just leave Kushina emotionally and mentally hanging with an abrupt order to forget what she heard.

_Eleven year olds really can‘t be treated like ANBU when they’re not ANBU._

“We can only be friends, Kushina-san,” Danzo said, all too aware of how Jiraiya watched them in the dim light. “Tsume doesn’t need pity and she doesn’t need coddling. You wouldn’t want that for yourself after being held captive by the Kumo, even though they didn’t hurt you. You need to understand and accept that you may never know what happened, and it would be… unkind to ask, so don’t push or pressure her. If Tsume ever volunteers anything, listen without judgment or questions, and then give her a hug and tell her how much you still love her, that you will _never_ stop loving her.” He struggled to remember the different psychiatric treatments and standard procedure dealing with ANBU recovering from rape. It wasn’t his forte. There was a reason why Danzo was kept far, far away from ANBU who needed someone to respond to their trauma with a gentle kindness.

Tsume had been conscious only a moment in his arms, and he remembered her wide, unseeing eyes, the way her limbs flailed and twitched weakly as if struggling, the strangled gasps for air. No matter how normal she seemed when fully awake and not chakra-exhausted or tearing out _spines_ with her bare hands, the scars _were_ there. It was a hidden blessing that the terrible short term memory that Tsume suffered from her traumatic brain injury undoubtedly blunted the sharpness of such remembered experience.

“Just do all that you can,” Danzo said slowly, “to welcome her back to Konoha. She told me she never wanted to be forgotten.”

Kushina’s expression was brave as she shook her head. “We never forgot her. Kokoro-chan and Sakumo-sensei and I always knew that Tsume-chan was out there somewhere, alive, and that we’d be together again.”

Danzo held Kushina’s gaze. He nodded pointedly. “Good. If she realizes how much she’s still loved, remembered, and wanted at home, it will make the burden of the memories… manageable, since the hope of being remembered and wanted was all that she had to cling to through the trauma.” There was only so much kindness he could handle, though. “Now go sit with Minato-san. I must speak privately with Jiraiya-sensei. Neither of you are to come back here without us calling you, or unless ordered by Jiraiya-sensei’s toad sentry in case of an emergency.”

Kushina nodded her head, looked at Tsume with raw sadness and uncertainty, and then retreated without touching Tsume. As she brushed passed Jiraiya, the Sannin said, “My toad will keep watch, and Minato is outside setting up traps. Eat what’s available and get as much sleep as possible, since we’re going to be running again before the sun sets.”

Kushina’s voice was a broken whisper. “Yes, sensei.”

Once Kushina had turned the corner, Jiraiya’s hands flashed through multiple signs before the walls flashed a deep blue, the jutsu surrounding them to prevent eavesdropping. Then another jutsu, this time lighting up the cavern in a soft, illuminating light. His expression, which had been kept mildly stern for Kushina’s benefit, darkened considerably as he knelt in front of Danzo. Danzo decided to busy himself with his wound, rooting through his pack for his first aid kit.

“So,” Jiraiya said, “this whole thing stinks of ANBU and Black Ops. Captured by Iwa nin my ass. What the hell is really going on?”

Danzo shrugged. “Mission is S rank. I don’t have authority to read you in. If you don’t know any healing techniques, could you at least sew this up?” He indicated his thigh.

“Tsunade-hime made me learn my way around a needle since I’m worthless at healing. Let me go wash my hands.” Jiraiya ducked out of the area for a lengthy moment as Danzo mentally rehearsed how to explain himself and still come out alive in the end.

His carefully orchestrated explanation was disrupted with the first thing that Jiraiya said as he returned with a wet rag in hand and knelt beside Danzo. “ _Bullshit_ that you don’t have authority.”

“But I _don’t_ , Jiraiya.” Danzo handed him the first aid kit. “I’m only read in peripherally, myself.” Not to mention that Danzo would be neck deep in boiling hot water once Orochimaru and Hiruzen caught wind of his interference in removing Tsume from her assigned position, let alone reading in anyone else.

“Okay, let me put it another way – _bullshit_ that lack of official authority has ever _stopped_ you in being limited, since you’ve always done whatever the hell you wanted, however the hell you wanted. You’re probably the only shinobi – hell, the only _person_ – in all of Konoha that the Third Hokage allows to get away with as much meddling shit as you do. Probably the only reason you don’t have competition is because Biwako likes to mind her own business.” Jiraiya paused at the expression that Danzo couldn’t prevent from crossing his face, and slapped his forehead in exasperation. “Oh – don’t tell me you never before realized just how much you get away with, Danzo.

“Hiruzen-sensei’s own sons don’t even get _half_ the leeway you have, and they’ve got their _mother_ on their side. Look, even the Head of Internal Affairs is always looking in the other direction when it comes to you! Oh, Kagami-san could probably get away with as much as you, but the man picked up all the ethics you’ve dropped over the years, so he wouldn’t bother trying. And when I say stinking of Black Ops, I mean infiltration into Tetsuzanshi. I’ve already been read in centrally with the ongoing operation – or I _was_ , up until last year.” Jiraiya shrugged. “Hey, since no one’s told me different, let’s just assume I still am.”

“Ah.” Danzo didn’t bother hiding his grim smile as he carefully arranged Tsume so she was laying comfortably with her head propped up on his pack. Her vitals were stable, and she seemed to be recovering her chakra stores slowly. He unwound the bandages, undid his pants, and shoved his clothes down to his knees before rolling over on his stomach. He felt Jiraiya’s hands, large and cool and nimble, against his flesh as Jiraiya carefully cleaned the area with the wet rag. It had been far too long since he had exposed his bare backside to another man – not since Torifu’s death. And he didn’t particularly care for it then any more than he did now. “So you know about Tetsuzanshi.”

“It was my idea to use Tsume’s talented nose.”

Danzo’s breath hitched in surprise. He briefly wondered if he had the strength to bury Orochimaru _and_ Jiraiya. Probably not. Which one did Danzo want dead the most?

Jiraiya continued his explanation, ignorant or uncaring of Danzo’s roiling emotions. “I tested Tsume when she was eleven and failed to graduate from the Academy the first time. She was able to get more information off of Yamanaka Rai’s bloody sleeve than any other Inuzuka nose that I presented it to, even though it was more than a month old and had been contaminated with different persons and environments. Up until then, Orochimaru didn’t believe me that her nose was as good as all that. But I didn’t want anything done until Tsume was _at least_ thirteen years old, and not without someone like me or Sakumo being with her every moment on the mission. She could easily sniff the information outside of city limit and wouldn’t need to be anywhere _near_ the targets.”

Orochimaru, Danzo decided then. Jiraiya had the decency to be left alive. Jiraiya was as good a man as Danzo suspected.

Danzo propped himself upright on his elbows, knotting his hands together. He felt iodine sting the wound. The cave floor was damp, lumpy, and uncomfortable; he could feel his joints ache in anticipation of sleeping on it. “It’s good to know,” he said, voice soft and considering, “that at least _one_ person thought Tsume needed adult supervision and protection.”

Jiraiya’s hands paused a moment. “Something tells me you weren’t meant to be either one. I thought you were her handler there and maybe the two of you got into trouble and were separated… Well, that’s probably more of a wish than a thought, given her public death declaration.”

“She didn’t have _any_ adult looking out for her personal best interests, not for a single moment when the mission was assigned. Inuzuka Shinzou told Tsume that she’d bury her in an unmarked grave if Tsume didn’t agree to the mission, and Orochimaru told Tsume she was going in without backup.”

Pain lanced through Danzo’s leg as Jiraiya’s hands jerked unexpectedly. “ _Shit_. That bastard… maybe I _don’t_ want to be read in.”

“You’ll need to know, given the seal you have to look at. My temporary modifications aren’t going to last long, especially once Tsume’s chakra recovers.” Better to warn Jiraiya what could potentially manipulate him. It nearly destroyed Danzo’s psyche, which was already long rooted in the darkness of the sordid underworld. The siren seal’s snare would utterly defeat someone who thrived in the bright sunlight like Jiraiya. “Long story short, seventeen weeks ago, Orochimaru assigned Tsume with the mission of gathering as much Intel on enemy forces from Iwa as possible. He placed a seal on her that would redirect any attention that her chakra signature would garner into desire, and then had Inuzuka Shinzou sell Tsume to Madame Haori’s House of Pleasure.”

“He sent her _where_ with _what_ seal?”

Danzo felt his anger flare as his hands curled into fists. “A very effective seal. I can barely make heads or tails of it. I was read into the mission about two weeks ago and told to obtain the required information from her. I was also told that she was supposed to stay there for years to come – standard procedure for a mole.”

“And you didn’t think it was odd that Tsume-chan had no backup or was stuck in a brothel?”

Danzo hesitated a moment. Then the moment seemed to drag on awkwardly… dangerously. He swallowed. “Orochimaru refused to give me the identity of the mole.”

“… _what?”_ Danzo felt Jiraiya’s rage wash over him and tensed at it, even though it wasn’t aimed at him – yet. “And as soon as you saw her, you yanked her out of the operation.”

Danzo suddenly didn’t like talking to Jiraiya. “No, that’s merely a clone because I feel like pissing off Orochimaru. Of _course_ I yanked Tsume out of the operation. Stop interrupting!”

Jiraiya’s answering sharp jab with the suture needle was entirely unnecessary, Danzo decided with a wince.

“I removed her from the brothel the night I initiated contact, once all the crowds had died down and everyone settled for bed. We eluded shinobi sent to track us down, and the next morning following our escape, Tsume caught Kushina’s scent.”

Jiraiya paused. “Wait – what? All the way here from _Tetsuzanshi_? You had to be _at least_ two hundred kilometers away at the time! I knew Tsume-chan was good, but holy shit!”

Danzo’s laugh was brief and hollow. “Tell me, Jiraiya, do green bananas with sugar sprinkled on them upset the Hokage’s stomach?”

“I…what?”

He studied the cave floor. It was a boring floor, given that it had long worn smooth from an underground stream of water, which was eventually diverted into what was now the waterfalls beside the case. He wished he could see and study Jiraiya’s face. “Sarutobi Hiruzen is your sensei; do you know whether green bananas give him an upset stomach or not?”

“ _How_ this is relevant I don’t even know, but you’re obviously leading up to something, so I’ll play along. Me and Tsunade-hime, we always suspected that Hiruzen-sensei’s love of bananas was influenced by his monkey summon – especially green ones, because he preferred the texture, and he’d enhance the flavor with sugar. So, what are you going with this?”

“Tsume told me, Jiraiya. The same morning she caught Kushina’s scent, when we were forty kilometers northeast of Tetsuzanshi, Sarutobi Hiruzen had oolong tea with a dash of cream, two lumps of sugar, and a green banana with sugar sprinkled on it for breakfast. She even knew that the sugar was _ink stained._ We were eight hundred fucking kilometers away and she fucking _knew_ what the Hokage was having for breakfast at his office, _and_ what the three Uchiha assembled in his office also had for breakfast _before_ arriving at his office!”

Jiraiya’s hands stilled. Danzo knew he was staring wide-eyed at Tsume’s prone figure. Danzo wondered if Tsume would hunch in embarrassment from the attention, or preen in delight. “Eight _hundred_ … why the hell did she even need to be in the flippin’ _country_? That’s like having the Byakugen stuffed up your nostrils and pumped up on steroids and soldier pills. Oh man. Can you imagine the blackmail that kid could dig up on every single person in existence? We’ve _got_ to keep her far away from the Fire Daimyo.” After a pause, Jiraiya added, “And Orochimaru too, apparently. With a nose like that – that’s S rank right there, no doubt. Beyond S rank, even!”

Danzo tasted bitterness in his mouth again. “With a nose like that, she _never_ had to be left alone in that brothel for a single moment, much less with such a seal in place. To do that to a twelve year old…” ( _TWELVE **FUCKING** YEARS OLD_, his mind screamed at him) “That’s a level of cruelty even I can’t fathom.”

“That…” Jiraiya’s voice fell silent, almost as if he stopped himself from voicing a protest on behalf of his teammate. “If _you_ can’t fathom it, there’s no hope for the rest of us. Although, honestly, I don’t think Orochimaru knew her nose was _that_ good.”

“Indeed not.” They were quiet, each buried in his own thoughts as Jiraiya finished suturing and dressing the wound.

“Be careful with that,” Jiraiya said as he replaced the supplies in Danzo’s first aid. “You’re this close to rupturing the tendon and crippling yourself.” He pinched his forefinger and thumb tightly together, no space in between, as Danzo looked over his shoulder.

Danzo shrugged languidly as he rolled onto his back and arched to pull his clothes up and over his hips. “Wouldn’t be any worse than losing an eye.”

“Yeah, well, an eye doesn’t carry you from place to place like a leg does. I ain’t packing you on my back, man. You don’t have the right parts to be riding _me_.”

Danzo grunted as he secured his fly. “I’ve ridden worse.”

“Hey!” Jiraiya blushed scarlet as Danzo straightened upward and raked his gaze up and down Jiraiya’s body.

“Hmm. Mind out of the gutter, Jiraiya, even if you have permanent residence there.” Jiraiya _was_ more to Danzo’s taste than women generally were, but that was better left unsaid. “You have got to look at the seal before Tsume wakes up. I’m serious. Orochimaru’s work was diabolical, and my patchwork isn’t going to last long.”

Jiraiya’s gaze flickered to Tsume. He hunched his shoulders and looked like a gigantic moping puppy with an unfortunate sunburn. “Give me a moment to recover – I’m not used to old dudes casually flirting with me. Last time that happened, I was fourteen and had to cross-dress with Orochimaru for a mission that I swear Hiruzen-sensei came up with just so he’d have an excuse to surround himself with young, cute girls.”

Danzo thought of the unintended consequences of thumping Jiraiya. And then thought he’d probably get an even more amusing reaction out of Jiraiya if he were to trail a hand along Jiraiya’s jaw. “That wasn’t flirting.”

“Yeah, well, if you were a woman, it would so qualify in my book. Not that I blame you for wanting to flirt with me – _I’d_ flirt with me if I was inclined that way. Besides, I don’t want to think about… Orochimaru and what he did, because I have to trust the man to watch my back.”

“I’m sorry.” And Danzo truly was, because he knew he could theoretically trust his old teammates, even those who were still alive. He didn’t want to imagine what it was like to have his understanding and worldview of such a companion torn asunder in betrayal, especially in the midst of war.

Heaving a great sigh, Jiraiya carefully arranged Tsume flat on the floor. Tsume’s right hand still tightly clenched the vertebrae she had yanked out of the Kumo nin.

“That’s disturbing,” Jiraiya said in a very unhelpful manner, pointing. “Can’t we pry it loose?”

“You feel like prying these bones from a sleeping dog?”

Jiraiya frowned thoughtfully as his hands flashed through another set of hand seals; light glimmered all around them, filling the cave they were hidden in and chasing away shadows. The scarlet color receded from his face. “Touché, Danzo. Touché.”

“The seal covers a _lot_ of skin,” Danzo warned as he leaned forward and grasped the hems of Tsume’s multiple yukata. “You’ll need to slide her panties around. Thankfully she isn’t wearing a bra we have to remove.”

Jiraiya heaved another great sigh as he carefully removed a brush and a sealed pot of chakra ink from his hip pouch. “Ah, man. She’s not over eighteen. I haven’t looked at anyone under eighteen since _I_ turned eighteen.” The silence that followed was awkward as Jiraiya wrestled with the lid on his pot. “Or least I try really hard not to when I learn they aren’t eighteen yet, Danzo – don’t look at me like that!” Jiraiya pointed at Tsume with the pot. “She doesn’t even qualify as a mature sixteen-year-old!”

_That_ didn’t even deserve the dignity of a response. Danzo yanked Tsume’s clothes up and around her armpits, revealing her bare torso and breasts. Jiraiya squirmed, his expression exceedingly uncomfortable as he set aside the brush and opened ink pot. They stared down together at Tsume, who remained unconscious through it all. “I’ve already told Tsume that you would be looking at her seal.”

Wonder of wonders, Jiraiya’s face burned bright red again. “I still feel like I deserve to have my eyes gouged out of my head, man. Looking at a mostly-naked twelve year old girl when you’re twenty-seven is entirely different from when you’re also twelve and going through the combined hell of curiosity and puberty.”

Danzo sighed as he coaxed the seal from where it lay hidden and folded beneath her purple toenail. As the seal’s scrollwork bloomed bright and shimmering in the light, from the delicate dip of her ankle to the gentle swells of her breasts, Danzo heard Jiraiya’s breath catch in his throat. “And how do you think _I_ feel, when I’m almost twice _your_ age?” Danzo shuffled on his knees until he was above Tsume’s resting head, his back pressed against the wall again.

“Decrepit?” Jiraiya’s voice squeaked and broke like he was twelve. His eyes were wide as he studied the seal. Then his eyes narrowed dangerously as he translated the seal and the purposes of its many layers. “This is an exceedingly complex siren seal.” One fingernail scratched at a deteriorating temporary modification that was black as sin and just as ugly with its clunky lines. “There’s a layer I can’t see.” Danzo felt the sudden rise of killing intent, and winced as its crushing pressure rushed at him. “To understand this seal, I need to look at it in five dimensions. I’ll have to go into sage mode.” Jiraiya formed a triangle with his hands as his eyes fluttered shut and his body went completely still. Another wave of pressure crested the killing intent, and Danzo fought the temptation to bury a kunai into Jiraiya’s heart while his eyes were still closed.

Danzo vaguely knew enough about senjutsu to realize it was rare and powerful. He hadn’t heard that it changed one’s physical appearance, though. Nor would he have ever suspected that someone like Jiraiya could’ve achieved senjutsu. He watched as the color of Jiraiya’s skin gained a greenish tint, warts popped up, nose enlarged, and facial hair sprouted off his chin. Danzo wondered if it was an added benefit to look hideous – not that Danzo himself was a prime candidate for _Kunoichi Kalender: Shirtless Edition!_

With a sigh, Jiraiya’s eyes opened – they were blocky and square, like a toad’s. He impatiently tugged his newly-formed goatee. “I hate this. It’s just not cool with the ladies.”

Danzo shrugged. “The ladies probably wouldn’t mind the goatee as much as they would the warts.”

Horrified, Jiraiya’s hands flew to his nose and felt around. Then he dropped his hands with a groan. “Okay. Let’s get this show on the road.” He turned his toad-eyes on Tsume’s seal. Danzo felt another dark wave stir as the hairs on the back of his neck rose in warning – and then Jiraiya raised his eyes from the seal and fixed them on Danzo. His expression was flat, but the looming deadliness in Jiraiya’s eyes made Danzo feel like he was staring into an empty sarcophagus that wasn’t going to remain empty for long.

“ _Don’t_.” Danzo struggled to keep his voice even, to not feed Jiraiya’s tremendous anger. “You have _no_ fucking idea what happened, what it’s like when that damn thing ensnares you.”

Jiraiya’s silence was deliberate as he pointedly turned his attention back to Tsume. He carefully eased Tsume’s pink panties around, never pulling them off completely, so he could fully read and study the scrollwork hidden beneath the scrap of cloth and still give her some modicum of privacy. “A five dimensional gaze allows its user to read the past, Danzo. Unfortunately, I know precisely what happened to the bearer of this seal _every_ moment that it’s been active.”

“ _I_ am not the one who put it on her.”

Jiraiya drew back for a moment, hands dangerously slack as they rested lightly on his knees. “You gave in, though.”

“Do you think—” Danzo forced himself to close his eye and draw in a deep breath despite the crushing force that surrounded him, a wave of fury-enhanced chakra that he couldn’t even match in his prime. Every sense screamed danger at him. Then he opened his eye and stared straight into Jiraiya’s. He _hated_ dealing with emotions – Orochimaru, with his cold, cruel logic, was far more tolerable than a passionate Jiraiya. “I know you’re protective of children – I’m grateful, truly, because _someone_ needs to look out for them – and I know that you’re fond of Tsume. I know that you, acting as a responsible adult – and I can’t even believe I’d ever say _that_ about _you_ – are angry on her behalf for the atrocious evils you‘ve… just witnessed. But the _only_ person in this damn cave who has the _right_ to demand her pound of flesh is Tsume. _Not_ you. _Not_ me. _Not_ Kushina or anyone else. Only Tsume.”

“The only time a twelve year old girl should have another person rolling around in her sheets is if that person is her two year old nephew or a cute little girlfriend invited over for a sleepover.” Jiraiya’s voice was flat and his face slack, nearly impossible for Danzo to read. “The worst is how she had to respond in an open, inviting manner, drawing men into her bed when she never wanted to.”

_That_ warned him more than any display of emotion could.

Danzo’s anger and shame burned in the pit of his stomach, churning like poison. “I will gladly and without delay carve that pound of flesh from myself the moment Tsume even hints towards wanting it. You do not have ownership, and you _do not_ have the right or place to demand that pound of flesh on her behalf. The moment you think or act as if you do, that you have the right, you will also be a monster. She is _not_ an object for you to be possessive and on whose behalf to be offended. She’s already been nothing more than an object to be used and abused for personal pleasure. She was thrown into this because the adults who were supposed to be responsible gave no consideration of what she wanted or thought. Don’t do that to her, Jiraiya. Not when she looks up to you.”

“That argument would work _if_ Tsume was an adult.” Jiraiya’s body was loose, his voice languid and hypnotic. He still hadn’t blinked yet. “She’s not. An adult has the responsibility to protect and guard – and she _is_ the responsibility, therefore she cannot demand anything that contradicts the responsibility we have as adults, and you can’t make those demands either, especially when you are _notorious_ for seeing people as nothing more than weapons to be used. You and Shinzou have both forfeited your responsibility, so if not me – who?”

“Don’t you dare compare me—” Danzo choked on his words, and then redirected his thoughts against the looming cold. Prior to Tsume, he didn’t know if he could honestly say he would never sell a kunoichi into sex slavery if it meant Konoha’s survival. “Her sensei then, because Sakumo is the closest thing to an acknowledged father figure in her life and it’s his responsibility to safely shape her into a capable kunoichi. Her Hokage also has the right and responsibility. No matter how much you think Sarutobi Hiruzen lets me get away with in life – this will not be one of them.”

Jiraiya lifted his chin. Did toad sages never blink? “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

A little voice – a voice that Danzo had spent the last few decades trying to smother and kill, and would never admit to any living soul – whispered, _I don’t want to die._ With long practiced ease, he ruthlessly shoved it away. “Because that would be the easy way out, Jiraiya. There are fates worse than death, and I do not deserve that mercy. And despite abdicating my responsibility, I’ve still tried to make right.

“I wasn’t even fucking told…” No. He would make no excuses for his actions. “I _yanked_ Tsume the first night we made contact, once I got away from the seal’s manipulation and could think. I modified the damn thing _twice_ already even when it was actively prying its way into my brain. The only reason I haven’t castrated myself yet is because _I_ was the only one who could pull Tsume out and get her to safety. Wallowing in my own guilt was a _luxury_ that wasn’t going to rescue her!”

Danzo stuffed a fist in his mouth when he became aware of shouting. He bit down as a red mist settled in his vision. He couldn’t remember ever being this angry before. Everything came roaring to the forefront – his shame, embarrassment, frustration, rage, fear and bewilderment. He felt raw and exposed, strung out because he had been ignoring his emotional intensity in the last four days, an unending regret of the likes he had refused to suffer since the last time he saw Senju Tobirama alive… and in the aftermath, when Danzo beheld his sensei’s lifeless body. He tasted blood in his mouth as his teeth scraped the inside of his bottom lip. All the feelings that he had been running from and trying to deny for nearly a quarter-century were making up for lost time.

Spitting out the blood, Danzo said, “ _You_ fucking brought her to Orochimaru’s attention in the first place. Because of that – you abdicated your own responsibility! _You_ are the fucking catalyst, _I’m_ the one who has had to clean up other people’s messes, and _Tsume_ has to pay the price. Let the blame roost on my shoulders – I know I’ve earned my fair share – but just don’t do anything that’s going to hurt her further.” Danzo scrubbed his face, feeling old and weary. “I’m not anything like Shinzou – and neither are you, because you’re going to make it right by fixing the seal that Orochimaru forced on her. That is the _only_ right you have.”

Jiraiya’s toad-eyes glittered dangerously, still unblinking. There was another pressure behind the killing intent, as if the entire mountain could be brought down upon Danzo’s head without ever touching Tsume’s or the other children’s. A heartbeat passed. And then another. The pressure eased back as Jiraiya finally blinked. “You’re right, Danzo. Were it not for my actions, Tsume never would’ve been noticed, never would’ve been assigned the mission, and never would’ve suffered this seal. And now I know you to be a better man than me. If I were in your shoes, I doubt I’d have the same strength of character to own my actions and rectify my mistakes.” Jiraiya bowed deeply at the waist then, his forehead nearly brushing the cave’s floor. “Forgive me.”

Danzo’s mind whirled as Jiraiya remained bowed and contrite. Then he lightly kicked the man’s shoulder dismissively. “Don’t… My character is weak and deplorable, and you did nothing I have the right to forgive. Besides, our fighting is not fixing Tsume’s seal.”

Jiraiya’s smile was genuine but tense as he straightened. “It takes a great man to admit he’s not great.”

Danzo tried to stuff down the clawing ache and ripping agony of emotions. He felt weak and pathetic. “What kind of Zen shit is that?”

“The good shit, man. When a man says he’s great, everyone knows he not. When a man says he’s _not_ great, everyone knows that he is probably great, or is at least honest, and that’s hard to come by in any case. So, here’s the bad news.” Jiraiya crossed his arms in front of himself, almost defensively. The stance and attitude change shifted his appearance from terrifying to just ridiculous. “I can’t remove the seal.” 

Danzo winced. He thought quickly of the kind of life that Tsume would have to live and survive with the seal. “Well, I know of a few shrines that only take mikos…” Sakumo and Kushina would forgive him, eventually, especially if he arranged Kuromaru to always be with Sister Tsume.

“The good news,” Jiraiya continued, one hand tracing the flaking modifications on Tsume’s exposed ribcage, eyes carefully not glancing at her breasts, “is that I can make a permanent modification that will mute the seal completely.”

That sounded only slightly better than being forcefully made into a miko. “ _That’s_ the good news? How?”

“Well, I _can’t_ add an off and on switch to this mess.” Jiraiya swung his hands wide in a circle to encompass all of Tsume. “The original seal is designed to prevent it, and I may never gain the skill to remove a seal that’s buried this deep in someone’s chakra system. However, since the seal would still be alive and active on mute, it won’t be affected by the suicide stop that Orochimaru attached, _and_ it’s not going to affect men the way it has been.”

Danzo figured that the suicide stop was the character that deteriorated any attempts to remove or turn off the original seal. “Which would be the same as off, for all intents and purposes.”

“Indeed. Ach. This mode always makes me hot.” Jiraiya peeled off his jacket and shirt, stripping to the waist. Danzo could see the sweat that coated still-green skin stretching tight over bulky muscles. After ridding himself of excess layers, Jiraiya grabbed his brush and the pot of ink. “I’ll apply it on top of your temporary modifications so it’ll kick in once those collapse completely.” With a flurry of the brush, Jiraiya began his work.

Danzo felt only a little tension and ache ease as beautiful swirls were brought to life, midnight blue and soft as velvet, side-by-side with glimmering purple. They covered the hideous slapdash of Danzo’s desperate work. Beneath Jiraiya’s brush, Tsume stirred.


	13. Alpha Years - Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have almost as many Questions regarding Sage Mode as I do summons. Alas.

There was a box.

It’s a plain, simple box – more like a brown rectangle with a hinged top, sloppily created in the same way a child would crudely draw a box with crayons. It existed because Madame Haori had told Tsume immediately upon Grandmother’s leave, “Make a box in your mind. Shove everything that hurts you, everything you don’t want to remember, into that box, and only open it up to shove in more things. That’s the only way you’ll survive in this business.”

And because she really did feel, deep inside where she didn’t want to admit it to anyone, that she was just a brain-damaged simpleton, Tsume dutifully imagined up the box in her mind, and mechanically shoved in all that hurt her.

It never helped.

Tsume couldn’t understand the process of making a box inside your head and shoving in everything that hurts you, because all that hurt was _still_ inside her heart. She couldn’t understand setting things aside and deliberately not remembering them when she had struggled for half her life to do the opposite. She couldn’t understand how you took the pain of being split in half and tuck it inside your mind, along with the memory of being forced face-down in a pillow, choking for breath, as your body burned with every pounding thrust. 

The more she tried to forget, the easier it was to remember.

There had been many painful realizations during her stay at the Palace – gut-wrenching emotional realizations that made her want to gnaw her own arm off to escape the emotional pain like a wild, trapped animal. But of everything that had ever harmed Tsume – of all the people and creatures and events that had hurt horrendously – only one thing had hurt more than her own fickle memory, and it was a loss she felt would dog her the rest of her life.

Tsume knew she would never get away with any elaborate lies (mainly because she would never _remember_ them), so she stuck mainly with the truth (modified only slightly and rather simply) whenever she was asked or she readily volunteered, because she was still an outgoing sociable alpha. _Everyone_ knew about Tsume’s almost two-year-old nephew that Tsume had been caring for ever since her sister died in childbirth, and how Kakashi was adorable and cute and very skilled with puzzles – although Tsume never admitted that the puzzles were really actually booby-trapped puppets from Suna that _usually_ had the poison needles and explosives previously removed. Whether the few surprises left behind was due to Sakumo deliberately leaving them attached or were truly accidentally missed was anyone’s guess. Everyone also knew about her own puppy, which she left with Kakashi because Grandmother said she couldn’t keep him, and that she had claimed her puppy as her own when his eyes still hadn’t opened to the world yet.

Tsume had explained to Madame Haori that she didn’t remember much of her past – or her present, really – because of the accident when she was six years old. She said that no one really knew what happened, that Grandmother found Tsume alone in the woods with her head bashed in, and that Tsume was lucky enough to survive. And because of the brain damage, her great-grandmother resented caring for her.

In that first week before the auction, as Tsume was taught by the more experienced whores how to pleasure men with a banana as a prop (“ _suck them dry first, that way they won’t last long once they get inside of you_ ”), Madame Haori pulled Tsume aside with more probing questions.

“What was the breaking point?” Madame Haori asked. Madame Haori was an older woman whose elaborately twisted hair was as silver as Grandmother Shinzou’s, but her face was unlined and her wide green eyes seemed soft and friendly in comparison. She was swathed in a beautifully ornate purple kimono, and stank of deception. “There must be some reason for her to finally sell you to my Palace, otherwise she would’ve just smothered you where you lay in that forest.”

Tsume hunched her shoulders as her own worries swirled around. She sometimes wondered why she hadn’t died either, except that her sire had been at Grandmother’s side at the discovery since he was required to open the forest for Grandmother’s access. “I don’t know.” She was all set to successfully graduate from the Academy, after all. Surely that meant something more than her failure of last year. “I think… I think it’s because I was happy.”

Madame Haori’s eyebrows shot upward, curved and beautiful like a butterfly’s wing. “Because _you_ were happy?”

“I think so, yeah. I had my dog, and my nephew, and my two best friends in the world, and they were helping me loads with math at school, and I finally understood that one formula for invisible numbers, and I guess I wasn’t miserable like Grandmother.” It was as close to the truth that Tsume could get without actually telling the whole truth. Lies, Yuu had once told her, are more believable when they were actually true.

“Ah. I suppose that would make sense. If she was bitter for the burden of caring for an invalid grandchild, to see your own attitude improve without any actual improvement in your handicap would seem demeaning towards her own miserable resentment.”

“Oh.” Tsume blinked, frowned, thought for a long moment, and then shrugged. “I still don’t get it.”

Madame Haori’s smile had been breathtaking and frightening – like the sun peeking through the mist during winter, cold despite its deceptive beauty and promise otherwise. “And perhaps it’s best that way. Your poor memory shall serve you well in this business. There is much we all desperately wish we could forget.”

But Tsume didn’t – _couldn’t_ – forget, and she chafed in resentful bitterness. That, and how Grandmother really had been right – _“Men are brutal and selfish monsters that rape anything with a hole!”_ All the details of that first night – the crisscrossed scars on the chest that weren’t fully covered by thick-white hair; the breath that stank of putrid flesh as he bit her, first with the mouth on his face, and then with the weird mouths buried in the palms of his hands; the penis that looked nothing like a turtle or a sock, and how he _forced_ it to fit – were etched bright and clear in her mind. And after the shinobi had finally gotten what he considered his money’s worth and leisurely dressed himself in his clean uniform with his shiny Iwa forehead protector in place across his pale forehead, Tsume fled, still bleeding, to the dog kennels.

Madame Kai found her. “You know you’re forbidden to have anything to do with the dogs.” Madame Kai seemed like a giant to Tsume. She was as round as she was tall, solid like an unmoving mountain, and ugly where Madame Haori was beautiful. Her face was pockmarked, her grey-streaked dark hair hung in long greasy knots, and half her teeth were missing or broken. She had a sweet, delicate scent like daffodils and honey.

“I don’t care!” Tsume shook her head, and kept her knees tightly pinned together as she hugged to the newest batch of puppies to her bruised chest – four hounds (three females, one male), approximately a month old, born out of season. She was pressed against the side of their mother, who focused on grooming Tsume’s sweat-damp hair like a cat. “They told me that there’s a void in me, because my brain is broken, and that I have to fill the void. I’m going to fill it with puppies, because puppies are nice and safe.”

Madame Kai reached for Tsume, and Tsume shrieked so loud that all the hounds in the kennels set up a loud braying that rattled the windows. The mother bitch grooming Tsume’s hair snarled at Madame Kai, spotted hair bristling at her haunches. Madame Kai withdrew, and returned a few minutes later with the kennel keeper – Madame Sora – and Madame Haori. Madame Sora went about quieting the dogs, and Madame Haori gently sat down in the dirty straw just beyond Tsume’s reach, unmindful of the damage being done to her peach-colored silk kimono covered with stunning phoenix embroidery. Madame Kai hovered in the corridor outside the dogs’ stall with her gigantic hands wringing in worry.

Madame Haori waited until Tsume had uncurled slightly from a tight ball around the puppies. “You know why I forbid my girls from making contact with the dogs.” She silenced the mother bitch’s growl with a single chop of her hand.

Tsume rubbed one of the puppy’s soft heads. “I know,” she whispered against the fur. “So they can track us down if we try to escape. But… but where am I going to go?” She bit back the sob. “I’m a brain-damaged simpleton. Simpleton Tsume – that’s what they called me at school.” She tightened her knees, all too aware of the steady throb of pain and the slow trickle of blood and semen. “My grandmother hates me, and now I’m j-just a warm body for a man’s cock. Where would I go?”

“Nowhere.” Madame Haori pulled a paper fan from her pocket and snapped it open. It was painted with a bright blue sea and flying herons. “You’re damaged goods, like the rest of us – although you arrived a little more damaged than most of my other girls. Dear child, you will always find a home here. Food, warmth, friendship, understanding. Even when you’ve grown too old and too used, when your youth is spent and your beauty has faded and you are no longer desirable, there will always be a home and a purpose for the broken women of this world here at my own little kingdom. I will feed and shelter you, give you an education in music and literature, and a place of safe retirement when you’re no longer able to work.”

“But I can’t ever leave,” Tsume said, hugging three puppies at once and trying hard not to move her sticky legs. Her vagina and rectum burned in agony, and there was a horrible, cramping pain in her abdomen.

Madame Haori paused in her fanning. She studied Tsume over the edge with narrowed green eyes. “As you said, where would you go? And, in truth, who would want to take damaged goods like us? Now and again, a young… _gentleman_ thinks he’s in love with one of my girls and tries to sweep her off her feet. He tries to lure her away with honeyed words of love and a better life.” Madame Haori’s gaze became distant, and her scent reeked of hatred and bitterness even though her face was carefully schooled with gentle warmth. “But it’s nothing more than a trap, designed to ensnare you into another form of enslavement. Men are always looking to own you like _chattel_ , to control your life and your soul. Here, you have freedom.”

“I’d rather have a puppy.”

Madame Haori’s laughter was akin to bells. “Simple things for simple souls, I’ve always felt. Very well.” The fond smile hid deceit as she snapped her fan shut and pointed it at Tsume. “You may play with the dogs – and even pick out your own puppy – as long as you are a good girl and work hard for me. Do as I say, and you shall have all the puppies your simple heart desires.”

Tsume didn’t know what the void was made out of – or what it once used to be – but she had seen the depravity that Orochimaru had warned her about; she had the depravity carved into her flesh in one form, saw another form in the cutting beauty of Madame Haori’s smile and words – so she figured the sooner she filled her life with puppies, the better. “Okay.”

“Good girl. Now let Madame Kai heal your wounds.”

Tsume filled her days with Madame Sora’s puppies, impatiently biding her time for when Madame Haori would keep her promise and for the promised contact from Konoha, while men filled her at night.

Within two months, Tsume learned that Madame Haori was every bit as cruel as Grandmother Shinzou, and even worse. At least Shinzou was honest in her cruelty; Madame Haori lied. She ruthlessly tore away Tsume’s puppy before Tsume even had a chance to love it, and the void loomed that much darker and emptier.

Tsume couldn’t hate Madame Haori, even though she understood and could recognize hatred in other people. She couldn’t even hate her great-grandmother for selling her to the brothel.

Tsume could feel happiness and excitement, pity and sorrow, guilt and embarrassment. She didn’t quite understand what being shy was about, and couldn’t hate any more than she could fear, but she could feel anger, embarrassment, resentment, and revulsion. She reviled pain, the situations that made her suffer, and the people who enjoyed such. She felt revulsion like a simmering, disgusting taste that was sometimes so pungent she could swear every single vein was tainted with it.

Tsume didn’t hate Madame Haori, but she was revulsed by Madame Haori’s poisoned sweetness almost as much as she was revulsed by the bed that Madame Haori assigned to Tsume every night.

oOoOoOo

When Tsume awoke to a body that was one gigantic throbbing bruise, she saw a bare chest covered in thick white hair hovering over her face. A single thought immediately flashed through her mind – _Danzo took me away. I don’t want to go back to Daisuke!_ She instantly went with the overpowering revulsion and bitter resentment, instead of beating it down and smiling and licking and not wincing when a warm body slid into her own.

Tsume shrieked, kicked upward wildly with her legs, and thrust her arms down and back against the ground so hard she propelled herself backwards from beneath the collapsing body. Her hand clattered with bones – she saw dried blood caking her arm, saw it seep against silken sheets, and shrieked again, flailing as revulsion and agony washed through her.

A voice penetrated as she became aware of the dark scent. “Tsume – you’re safe. Come to me, you’re safe, Tsume.” She flailed against the hard stone floor before scrambling on her hands and knees to the welcoming arms. She pressed herself against Danzo’s side, shaking with adrenaline, as he wrapped an arm tightly around her shoulders. She buried her nose against the exposed skin of his arm where his sleeve was rolled up, so she could concentrate on his scent. “Are you okay, Jiraiya?” Danzo asked.

A high-pitched whimper was his only reply. Tsume swiftly sorted through the different scents that surrounded her – Danzo, Jiraiya, Kushina and Minato, waterfall, cave, fear and loathing (Danzo), dismay and pain (Jiraiya), concern and sleep (Kushina and Minato), and a toad...? Yup, definitely a toad. She felt herself tremble as the rush of adrenaline left her without energy, and she became intimately aware of how much she _hurt_. Then she realized most of her clothes were still bunched up around her armpits. Without moving from the safe protection of Danzo, she ignored the pain (she was used to smiling and moving and pretending to have fun even when it hurt sooooo badly), and wiggled and tugged the many yukatas down with her left hand. While doing so, she peeked over her shoulder and Danzo’s arm. Jiraiya was curled facedown on the floor, his hair fanning wide around his head on the stone floor.

“Did I kick him?” she asked Danzo with a loud whisper.

Danzo’s voice was wry. “It looked like your signature move – a blow to the testes.”

“I felt that.” Jiraiya whimpered without moving. “Ah, man. I felt that on _five_ dimensions.”

“Gosh. I’m sorry.”

A wheeze. “No, you’re not.”

“I do want to be sorry, though, because you’re a nice man as far as men go, and I always liked the sock puppet shows you put on when Tsunade-hime had to heal me. But I don’t know what you’re doing or where your shirt’s at or why my clothes were shoved up – wait! Are you going to be looking at me at the hot springs?”

Jiraiya’s hand, green-colored with a few warts on the wrist, twitched in protest. “Too young for me.”

“Well, it would cost you anyway. Two hundred ryou a peek, with an extra fee for nipple and ass flashes.” She winced as Danzo thumped her. The thump vibrated through every aching joint in her body. “Ooooooowwwww. What was that for?”

“For good sense,” Danzo replied with a stern expression. “Jiraiya-sensei fixed your siren seal so it’s safely mute now; the least you should do is thank him.”

“You mean I’m still stuck with this thing?” Tsume felt something twinge inside – disappointment? Betrayal? It was hard to tell when her body was so hurt and drained of energy, and she couldn’t force her hand, swollen and already purple with bruising, to open and release the vertebrae. She hoped she wasn’t stuck with the bones like she was the seal. That was just embarrassing in light of all the canine comments she already dogged.

Jiraiya’s only answer was another whimper. Danzo just rubbed Tsume’s shoulder in sympathy – it felt like salt rubbing into a weeping sore. She flinched and pressed further against him to escape the pressure from his hand.

“You drained yourself dangerously low of chakra when you fought the Kumo nin,” Danzo said. “That’s why I expressly told you not to get involved with the fighting and to only run away. The simplest thing in the world, and you couldn’t even do that.”

She felt her face scrunch up in a frown. She waved the vertebrae at him, ignoring the burning agony that ran through her entire hand and arm. “Yeah, well, I can tear a man’s spine out with my bare hand, so there!”

Danzo hardly looked impressed. “And Tsunade-hime can pulverize a man’s head into mush with a flick of her finger. You have a long way to go before you can even hope to reach her level.”

“Really?” That would be so _cool_ , Tsume decided as she studied the bones in her hand, to kill someone with the flick of her finger.

Jiraiya wheezed. “That… that requires superior chakra control.”

“True, yes. And if Tsume had that level of control, she wouldn’t have drained herself to near nothing.” Danzo tapped the top of Tsume’s head. Even her scalp ached. “Make yourself a mental note: no more ripping out spines until you either build up monster-levels of chakra, or you obtain knife-edge control over your chakra.”

Tsume looked down at her hand, which was already starting to turn purple beneath the brown smear of dried blood. The bones kind of reminded her of a centipede. A really ugly centipede from the depths of nightmares, with the addition of dried blood and shriveled tendons and nerves. “Why do I get the feeling I’m never going to have loads of chakra or that good a control? Wait – is this your way of saying I’m not allowed to kill anyone like this ever again?”

“That would be something to discuss with your sensei.”

Tsume wiggled around until she tried slipping the fingers of her left hand between the bones and her right hand, which seemed locked in place, unable to open even though her brain demanded it. White fuzzed the edges of her vision as she tried pulling her fingers away from the bone. She stopped as horrendous pain screamed up the length of her arm. “I don’t want to be stuck to this for the rest of my life!”

“Just wait until you replenish your chakra. It’s likely you may have burned the tenketsu in that hand by improperly over-enhancing the strength in it.”

Tsume whimpered. “You mean I damaged it? Is it permanent?”

Danzo’s hesitation was not reassuring. “Maybe not.”

Tsume briefly resented herself for being so reckless, and then sighed; it was what it was. She couldn’t exactly jam the spine back into the body, so Tsume figured she’d worry later. By then, Jiraiya was straightening up, his expression still a little strained and uncomfortable. She grinned at him. “Nice goatee. Is it new?”

Jiraiya slapped his hands over his face to hide the goatee, and glared at her over his fingers. “No. I’m going to release my sage mode now,” he told Danzo, his voice slightly muffled. “Then I’ll get some food, and we’ll all rest.”

Tsume relaxed against Danzo. “I like my current pillow.” He also radiated heat, which was very nice in the cold and damp cave.

“I am _not_ your personal pillow. And you’re going to sleep with Kushina.”

“I am?” Sleeping with Kushina-chan sounded better, anyway, even if Kushina-chan probably wasn’t as warm as Danzo. “Yay!” Unfortunately, Tsume’s legs were too weak for her to stand despite her best efforts – stupid jelly for legs – so Danzo picked her up like she was an errant puppy, his hand bunching her yukatas tight over her shoulders as his pack dangling from his other hand. They walked away from Jiraiya, whose eyes were closed in meditation, and entered the small cavern where Kushina and Minato were. As he stepped through the opening, a flash of turquoise broke around them – the jutsu that Jiraiya erected earlier to prevent eavesdropping had fallen when Danzo crossed its threshold.

Tsume saw fading dawn colors in the sky from the mouth of the cave; in the entrance was a seated toad as tall as she was with a tanto strapped to its back. Perpendicular was Minato, asleep sitting upright, his head tilted slightly forward and his lower back pressed against the wall. Kushina sat awake and shivering with her side pressed against him and her arms wrapped around her bent knees. At the sight of Tsume, Kushina squealed with a bright smile. Minato snapped awake and was immediately alert, eyes blinking rapidly at his surroundings.

Danzo set Tsume down between Kushina and Minato, and honestly, he could’ve been more gentle, Tsume thought with a wince. “She’s sore and tired from the chakra depletion,” he said with a warning in his voice. That didn’t stop Kushina from throwing her arms around Tsume and pulling her into a tight hug. Tsume gasped as every muscle and bone made their protest loudly known. Kushina pulled back with her brow crinkling in worry.

“Are you okay? Is there anything I can get for you? Why are you still holding those bones?”

“I’m fine,” Tsume said rapidly. Minato leaned forward to peer around Kushina’s body; Minato’s expression was as knowing as Kushina’s was suspicious. She found herself hunching down, trying not to feel embarrassed with her own weakness. “Well, I _will_ be fine. Danzo thinks I burned the tenketsu in my hand and that’s why it’s stuck closed like this. So… I guess I get a battle trophy?” She flopped the arm up and down in a stiff wave, careful not to let the pain cross her face. The bones rattled. “Yay me.”

“Where’s Jiraiya-sensei?” Minato asked, trying to rub warmth into his arms.

Danzo’s expression was as wry as his face as he sifted through his pack. “Recovering from Tsume’s crippling blow.” He smirked as Minato turned wide eyes on Tsume’s battle trophy.

Tsume bristled defensively. She knew what that look meant. “I was confused when I woke up, okay? I… I might’ve kicked Jiraiya-sensei in the balls.”

Minato was quiet for a long moment as the horror melted from his face, replaced by wry amusement. Then he shrugged and raised the volume of his voice. “Okay, _that_ he probably had coming.”

An indignant groan was heard from further away. “I did _not_!”

“I’m sure you deserved it for _something_ , sensei.”

Jiraiya’s voice dropped into a grumble about disrespecting brats too big for their britches. Tsume could smell the amusement from everyone present, including the toad. Satisfied that most of everything was right in her part of the world, she settled against Kushina, accepted the aspirin that Danzo gave her from his first aid kit, and then reluctantly ate her dinner of radish and dried meat left-handed.

“I bet this is really unhygienic,” she told Danzo, waving the spine. “What if I catch another disease?”

He eyed her as he pulled the wool blanket out of his pack. “Then you should’ve thought about that _before_ filleting the enemy. Also, why do you sound like it wouldn’t be the first time you caught a disease?” He tossed the blanket at her as Tsume clamped her lips shut and vowed never to say another word. “Get some rest. We still have a long way to run.”

“Okay.” Kushina helpfully spread the blanket over Tsume, and then scooted closer as she tucked herself beneath it. They settled comfortably together, with Kushina tucking her head beneath Tsume’s chin. Tsume glanced over. Minato stared at them wide-eyed, his arms wrapped around himself. He looked like he was cold, lonely, and needed a hug.

Tsume felt a chill settle in the pit of her stomach, because she knew what lonely felt like. “Oh, fine then.” She pinched a section of the blanket between her left fingers, and reluctantly lifted the material in offering, opposite of Kushina. “I’ll clobber you if you snore, Mooncalf.” She told herself he didn’t count, because Minato was too little (kind of like an extra-large Kakashi) to qualify as a man. Besides, Tsume wasn’t revulsed by Minato or what he could do – Minato wouldn’t hurt a flea. Unless the flea wore the forehead protector of Kumo or Iwa, and then all bets were off, probably.

Minato brightened and shimmied under the blanket as his scent shifted from loneliness to contentment. It was a tight fit, but the three preteens somehow managed to squeeze together beneath the blanket, snug and warm. Kushina murmured and shifted so she was comfortably wedged against Tsume, which pressed Tsume against Minato.

Mooncalf was almost as warm as Danzo, and even though he didn’t keep his hands to himself – he slipped one arm around Tsume’s lower back and half-way across Kushina, like he was angling himself to roll himself in front of them like a shield in case of an attack – that was okay. He smelled like a protective autumn campfire roasting salted apples.

Tsume wanted to ask Kushina about Kakashi and Kuromaru, about Kokoro, Sakumo, and Hidarime-chan. But, she supposed, with a glance at Kushina’s drooping eyelids, another glance at Danzo’s tired, pinched expression, and with an awareness of how her body throbbed with pain and exhaustion, that the questions could wait until the next day.

Tsume gently wound Kushina’s beautifully brilliant red hair around her left wrist. Then she closed her eyes and entrenched herself in all the familiar scents of home.

oOoOoOo

The afternoon was late but still felt like it came all too quickly when Jiraiya awoke the children. Some time during their sleep, the blanket got tangled up everywhere, Tsume wound up sprawled across Minato and Kushina, and Kushina had drooled.

Tsume’s body still ached, and her right hand screamed in agony every time she tried to wiggle a finger loose. The color of her hand had turned into a spectacularly solid shade of eggplant-purple that started at her fingertips and eventually faded upwards by her elbow. Her entire lower arm was swollen to nearly twice its original size, and the bones felt like they were cutting into her palm. As Danzo prepared a quick breakfast (supper?) of rice and tea with some wood Jiraiya’s toad sentry had obtained, Tsume talked Jiraiya and Danzo into letting her and Kushina bathe.

“Look,” she told them, “trust me when I say we _all_ stink, especially when Kushina hasn’t had a bath since she was captured – sorry, Kushina-chan – and I’ve got this bloody bunch of bones in my hand that’s going to start smelling like a slaughterhouse and alert everyone around us!”

“She has a point,” Jiraiya said from where he was seated beside Danzo. He looked like he had recovered rather well for experiencing a blow felt in five dimensions.

Danzo rubbed the scar on his chin. “Very well. Minato – you accompany them and keep a lookout for possible presence of other enemy nin. Tsume, keep your nose open.”

“Don’t peek,” Tsume told Minato as she and Kushina mounted Jiraiya’s toad. Then she yelped and grabbed Kushina as the toad hopped out of the cave and plummeted downward. Minato followed at a more sedate pace, easily picking his way down the cliff like he was taking a stroll through a manicured park. In the hollow of some tall boulders where an eddy of water was sheltered from the full force of the rapids to form a gentle pool, Kushina and Tsume were quick in stripping down and washing themselves – the water was freezing, and the air was almost as frigid, even though the lingering sun was warm. But after eight days of captivity, Kushina was grateful to be clean, and Tsume’s brain felt lighter as she splashed and scrubbed one-armed. She was careful to keep her right hand submerged, because the cold water eased some of the gut-twisting agony and burning.

As they scrubbed with handfuls of pebbled sand, Tsume was able to finally ask her questions. “Grandmother hauled me off on the mission before I graduated – I’m sure I graduated. Who’s my sensei?”

Kushina nearly vibrated with excitement. “Oh, Tsume! You’re on my team, with me and Kokoro-chan and Sakumo-sensei!”

Tsume cheered, shivering. “Yay. How’s K-Kakashi and Kuromaru d-doing?”

Kushina’s face was thoughtful as she ducked her head a few times beneath the water’s surface. Tsume envied how Kushina’s hair, almost a deep burgundy when wet, fanned gracefully outward as it followed the eddy. Tsume just looked like a rabid hedgehog. “Kuromaru misses you. So does Aunt Natsumi. Aunt Natsumi keeps saying that if you aren’t back by the New Year, she’s going hunting for you herself with an army of summons, believe it! She’s been teaching Kakashi how to throw kunai and shuriken, and he’s got a real hand at it. Oh, uh, by the way.” Kushina rubbed Tsume’s back where Tsume couldn’t reach. “Aunt Natsumi knows that Kakashi isn’t a little girl.”

Tsume shrugged. “Well, I f-f-figured that the jig w-wouldn’t last forever.”

“Uh. Well, actually, Aunt Natsumi said she’s always known Kakashi was a little boy, and thought maybe you dressed him up in ribbons and dresses because Grandmother Shinzou never let you have dolls.”

Mortified, Tsume felt her face go red, because she just _knew_ that Minato could hear their entire conversation – he had to remain close enough to quietly alert them of any incoming enemies (of which none was around, she had tried to argue, but Minato sternly told her that her nose didn’t get to overrule Danzo’s order). She never wanted to play with dolls! (Not much, really. Not after Grandmother found her when she was seven years old and reenacting the life that used to be, that she clearly remembered, with a Tsume-doll and a Grandmother-doll…) “What? No! That’s n-not it!”

“Aunt Natsumi told me that one night, when I was dropping Kakashi off before a mission. She said that she wasn’t mad, and actually thought it was really cute. She took pictures and everything, believe it!” Kushina giggled. “She said you’d need the blackmail material when Kakashi gets to be an unruly teenager, believe it – especially, she said, if he’s anything like his aunt.”

Tsume scoffed at that. “Kakashi’s a sweetheart. He’s t-too laidback to be an unruly teenager l-l-like me. I bet he’s going to be j-just like his dad.”

Kushina and Tsume quickly dressed in most of their clothes; Kushina wore her outer layers so she could wash her underwear and Tsume’s yukatas. The middle layers of Tsume’s yukatas were cleanest, so she peeled off the first two top and bottom layers so Kushina could try scrubbing them clean with handfuls of rough pebbles. Tsume felt guilty that Kushina should be doing most of the work, but the shivering made all of her already-sore muscles clench in agony, and she only had one working hand.

While Kushina was scrubbing, Tsume skirted to the other side of the boulders where Minato had been sitting on a small rock with a blank, stupid expression on his face as he studied the whirling eddies of the rapids. Minato once called it his “thinking expression” in the Academy; Tsume didn’t believe that he actually did any thinking. She handed Minato a fist-sized rock. “Can you break this down?” she asked, waving her right hand that still clenched the spine. “It’s really bulky and getting in the way.”

Minato agreed with a quick nod of his head. Tsume laid her hand against the surface of one boulder, the spine strung out on either side. Minato clamped one hand on her aching wrist to secure it, and then smashed the bones on one side with a single strike.

Tsume’s vision washed with white again as pain flooded her arm from the vibrations. Minato’s hand tightened on her wrist as her legs gave out beneath her and she slumped. “ _Breathe_ ,” he hissed in her ear. The white-flash of agony eased off into a gigantic blue throb of pain that felt like her entire hand had been crushed along with the bones that lay in particles around them. Minato cut the dangling tendons and nerves with his kunai. “One more time,” he told Tsume, his voice even and sure.

She nodded with a whimper. She wanted to curl up in a corner and cry from the pain. Then she straightened upward and repositioned her arm. Minato shifted around her so he could smash the vertebrae on the other side. Tsume’s vision when white again, worse than the first as pain shot up to her shoulder, worse even than what she experienced on Auction Night.

Minato released Tsume’s wrist to catch her around her middle, and support her weight. His smile was brighter than the waning sunshine as he eased her onto the wet rocks. Sharp points jabbed her hips and the back of her thighs. “You did good,” he told her, letting her upper body rest against his torso. “Keep breathing, Tsume-chan.” His large hands felt really nice and warm as he massaged her shoulder, and carefully worked down her upper arm. The muscles stung and ached, but his gentle touch seemed to ease the spasms that made her entire arm shake.

Tsume blinked back a sudden wave of pained tears as she tried to think of the last person who had really been so genuinely nice to her that wasn’t Danzo (who wasn’t really a nice person after all) or part of the Unholy Trio/Cute Mascots. Well, there had been Hidarime, Aunt Natsumi and Oyubi. Then she thought, with a desperate hunger, _I really miss Sakumo_.

“Minato – what did you do?” Kushina was on them in a red flash, her wet hair hanging in dripping ropes around her face, as she flung the laundry like a weapon. “Don’t touch her!” Minato found his face smothered in a dripping wet yukata with only a few remaining bloodstains. He floundered a moment while Kushina dragged Tsume away from Minato and hovered protectively.

Minato’s expression was confused and the hair around his face wet when he finally untangled himself from the wet material. “I…I didn’t…” He heaved a gigantic sigh as his shoulders rounded forward and his head drooped. “What did I do wrong _this_ time?”

“Nothing,” Tsume said, sniffling back her tears, just as Kushina growled, “Everything!”

“No, really,” Tsume said with a wave of her left hand. “It’s okay, Kushina-chan.” She swiped at her eyes. “Mooncalf-san was helping me like I asked, and he even threw in a free massage!” Her right forearm and hand still throbbed in nearly-unbearable agony, but she managed to nudge Kushina. “I bet we could talk him into a foot massage later!”

Kushina’s lower lip trembled as she plucked at Tsume’s sleeve. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Her scent stank of fear and pain. Tsume stared at her for a long moment as a new suspicion formed in her mind. She felt her heart flutter in her chest.

“I’ll be all right,” Tsume said softly, laying her left hand on Kushina’s. “What about _you_?” She was suddenly glad she had ripped the man’s spine out, especially if he or any of the others had hurt Kushina the same way Tsume had been hurt. It was too easy to imagine Kushina in Tsume’s place, lying on her back with her red hair fanning over the pillow while a faceless stranger pumped between Kushina’s bruised knees. Kushina didn’t smell like that had happened, but Tsume’s imagination was sometimes a little stronger than her nose.

Bawling, Kushina threw her arms around Tsume. “I-I’m okay if y-you are!” Unable to stop herself because of the riot of emotions and ongoing pain, Tsume burst into tears and hugged Kushina’s arm close.

Minato’s eyes were wide as he gazed at them. Then he wrung excess water out of the yukata. “I just don’t get girls,” he muttered with a shake of his head.

oOoOoOo

After they had stopped crying, washed their faces, and Minato pulverized the crushed vertebrae and tossed the remains into the rapids, they all returned to the cave. The last of the light was fading as the sun set and the first evening stars were making themselves known. The rice and tea were hot, welcome delights. Kushina and Tsume huddled together beneath Danzo’s wool blanket, sharing a bowl of rice and a mug of tea, since Danzo had limited utensils and Minato’s supplies only consisted of high-protein ration bars.

Danzo led the conversation. “What happened, Kushina?” His gaze was hard and his face was cold as he stared at Kushina. “How did _you_ manage to fall into enemy hands?”

The Red Hot Habanero wilted from the full force of Danzo’s attention. She pulled her knees up to her chest. “Um… Well, eight days ago I guess, my team and I were near the Fire-Grass border, running supply relief between stations and outposts. I remember there being a gigantic explosion – the enemy must’ve set up a blast zone to trap us– and we caught the edge of it. The shockwave knocked me unconscious, and when I woke up, I was chained up and surrounded by nine Kumo nin. I don’t know what happened to my team.”

“But _you_ know why Kumo grabbed you, and why your rescue is of great importance.”

“…yes.” Kushina hunched further, but Tsume thought the glare Kushina gave Danzo over her kneecaps was impressive. Tsume tried not to look too curious with where the line of questioning was going (so, just why was Kushina-chan so important?). She must not have been as subtle as she thought, because Jiraiya cast Danzo a warning look.

“Well.” Danzo poked the fire with a stick. “This will be interesting, given how many S Rank secrets are involved and Jiraiya-sensei and I are the only ones with the clearance levels to deal with them.”

Jiraiya pointedly coughed. “Ah, Danzo? You’re not exactly quelling their curiosity, you know.”

Danzo didn’t even look at Jiraiya as he straightened. The fire had flared suddenly, lighting Danzo’s face in a cast of wicked darkness and gleaming red embers reflecting in his single eye. His shadow loomed behind on the cave wall, the angles sharp and dangerous. Tsume felt a shudder race down her spine that had nothing to do with her still-wet clothes. “I do not see the need to point out to these young shinobi that their enemies will stop at nothing to obtain S Rank secrets should wagging tongues reveal the existence of such.”

Minato nodded his head solemnly, as did Kushina.

Tsume just blinked. She raised her left hand as if in classroom. “I don’t get it.” She felt Kushina wince as Danzo slowly tilted his head and leveled his glare at Tsume. “I need small words, remember?”

“Ah, yes. Simpleton Tsume.” Danzo knitted his fingers into a cradle upon which to rest his chin; the angle cast plunged of his face in shadow. Orange embers reflected in his eye. “ _Your_ S Rank secret is the fact that over two hundred kilometers away you were able to detect that Kushina was held captive by nine Kumo nin, thus enabling us to track and follow.” She noticed that he hadn’t mentioned the Hokage’s green banana from over eight hundred kilometers away, which seemed much more impressive to her. “The Iwa nin who captured you because of the Inuzuka clan’s reputation for being exceptional trackers, but they would’ve guarded you better had they realized truly how keen your nose is.

“No one must ever be aware that you can, from a great and safe distance, reveal exact position and number of forces in real time. Our enemies wouldn’t have to intercept and decode messages; they wouldn’t have to risk infiltration or capture, nor would they need to torture someone who may not even possess the Intel the enemies are looking for. After all, your nose can fetch that information faster and more accurately than any Hyuuga could, and from a distance that’s at least hundred times the range of the Byakugan.”

It didn’t seem fair that Danzo was singling her out like this, even if it seemed like he was underhandedly explaining the “official” story of her prolonged absence to Minato and Kushina, as well as impressing on all of them what to avoid saying if curious people peppered them with questions when adults weren’t around to prevent the questions. But it was also kind of cool to know that her nose was even more awesome than the Byakugen. “Oh.”

“A stray comment on your sense of smell – innocent, playful, seemingly harmless – could alert our enemies, and would spell the end of your freedom.”

Tsume squirmed uncomfortably. When he put it that way, she suddenly realized just how bad it would be for the rest of the world to know just how much cooler her nose was than the Byakugen. Dang it. “Okay.”

“I needn’t remind you what tortures could be used to break you.”

As Kushina’s breath hitched as if she thought of something horrible, Tsume remembered being pressed face-first into the feather pillow that was saturated with the stench of countless other women and their terror, pain, and despair, and the painful sensation of appendage thrusting into her. “…I know.”

“Death is not something to be feared, but would be a luxury denied to you.” Danzo’s words were like sharp blades, their strikes precision-quick. “And ultimately they will realize it’s not your nose that’s so valuable, but your uterus.”

A different red – of blood staining her thighs and Madame Kai’s gloved hand – filled Tsume’s mind, as the lid of her memory’s crude box slammed open. She remembered the cool, hard look on Madame Haori’s face, and the stench of envy and hatred that poured off the woman. Tsume pressed her fisted right hand against her belly button, all too aware of the void that Orochimaru had warned her about. “Shut up,” she whispered. She had been so careful not to say anything to Danzo, because this was what she wanted to forget the most at the brothel, the one thing she desperately wished she could forever leave in the box.

“Why do they need to brainwash you when they can just breed you like a dog?”

She trembled as she hunched into herself. (“ _Terminate it.”)_ “Shut up!” 

“And by a careless stray word, your descendants – your own _pack_ – could be used as weapons against your village.”

Tsume wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to bite Danzo and claw out his remaining eye. She hurt like she was raw and flipped inside out, like Madame Kai was scraping out her insides all over again, and revulsion made her stomach and head swim.

Jiraiya’s voice was respectful, but it held an undercurrent of deadliness. “I think that’s a point all three of them all understand quite clearly, Danzo.”

“Do they, now?”

It was Minato who spoke. “We do, sir.” He angled his body by tilting forward on his knees and curled one arm outward, around Tsume’s huddled figure as if he was trying to shield her from Danzo’s cruelty. He bowed his head. “Thank you for emphasizing the importance of secrecy. Perhaps it’s wisest not to speak more of the subject, as it may inadvertently reveal details beyond our clearance level.”

Jiraiya jumped in before Danzo could say anything. “Minato’s absolutely right. Besides, hammer at the point any more, Danzo, and you run the risk of losing them to boredom.” He leaned forward, cupping a hand around Danzo’s ear to whisper too low for the others to hear. Tsume instantly sharpened her hearing the same way she sharpened her olfaction – the crackle of the fire seemed like booms, louder than the five different pounding heart rhythms or the sandpaper rasp of breathing. “Five dimensions, Danzo. She’s just four weeks away from a forced abortion, and it haunts her more than the rapes.”

Tsume redirected chakra from her ears so fast that her hearing was filled with a deafening ringing. She didn’t hear what Danzo said, although the expression on his face and eyes remained unchanging, although his scent coiled dark with a spike of the man’s anger. Jiraiya nodded and stood, a friendly smile crossing his face as he turned to the children. Kushina stood, then Minato, and Tsume stiffly mimicked them as her ears continued to ring.


	14. Alpha Years - Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May the Fourth be with all my readers! I have waited years to say that. >:D

Minato was short – shorter than her, in fact, although that was most likely because he was a year and a half younger than her. Tsume hoped that he would someday come into a growth spurt (just like how she was finally getting her own growth spurt). But he was strong. She supposed it made up for him being so short. She also thought his hair would be rough and thick, like straw, but it was actually soft like dandelion fluff.

“Is there something in my hair?” Minato asked, craning his head to the side to look at her from the corner of his eye.

Tsume buried her nose in his hair and sniffed. “I like the shampoo you use,” she said decisively. It was sooooo soft.

“I, uh, haven’t washed my hair with any shampoo in the last three weeks.”

“Oh, believe me, I can tell. But don’t worry, ‘cause you don’t stink _that_ badly.” Tsume ignored Minato’s embarrassment as she poked her nose into his hair again. It tickled, and she sneezed. Minato staggered in surprise, and her grip tightened around his shoulders. “Hey – you promised you wouldn’t drop me! My shin’s already bruised from where we ran into that stump.”

Minato heaved a sigh. “Isn’t someone else’s turn to carry Tsume?” he asked. He even sounded like he _wasn’t_ whining. Tsume figured that Minato had the nicest voice for being _nice_ that she ever heard from anyone.

Jiraiya’s pace quickened ever-so-slightly as he pulled ahead, just outside of their tight little formation. Danzo’s pace slowed and the man dropped behind somewhat. That left Kushina, who kept pace side-by-side with Minato.

“Um. I don’t think I’m strong enough to carry her.” Kushina pressed an uncertain finger to her lips. They were heading for a Konoha relief station located at the lower south-eastern border of the Land of Whirlpool, a once-allied nation with Fire, where the countryside was filled with scattered lakes, bogs, and swamps. They managed to successfully avoid the worst of the Kumo and Hoshi patrols that blanketed the countryside because Tsume had been able to sniff them out and steer her group clear of them. Literally. She had taken to tugging Minato’s hair whenever she wanted him to change course. It was the best fun she had since Grandmother sold her. But because she was also steering them clear of the bogs and swamps, which were filled with venomous creatures and insects, and deadly gaseous fumes, and also all hotspots of human activity (primarily villages, but also the occasional farming or woodworking homestead), their travel was significantly lengthened. It had already been two days since they initially left the cave.

Tsume personally thought that there seemed to be an awful lot of patrols, until Jiraiya wryly pointed out to her that it was part and parcel to a _war_.

Tsume wasn’t permitted to run because she still suffered from the chakra depletion that kept her in a constant throb of pain and muscle spasms, occasionally marked by waves of sudden all-body weakness that made her sag limp against Minato’s back. She was also barefooted. It made running across the countryside, especially in the dark, a dangerous and uncomfortable occupation. “Oh, three-man cell from Jomae with chakra-wire traps. They seem awfully far from home. We gotta go thataway!” Tsume tugged Minato’s hair on the left side of his head. He sighed and changed angles. Jiraiya and Danzo instantly corrected their course to match his, both closing ranks around the three preteens.

“You know,” Jiraiya said, “this is probably the first time I’ve ever teamed up in the field with an Inuzuka.” He paused briefly, as if searching for the right words. “Are they always this bossy, Danzo?”

“Only the alphas,” Danzo replied with a light voice. “The betas follow pack leader orders without question, and gammas tend to do their own thing if you don’t assert yourself as an alpha with full rights to command them, so you can only hope that their own thing coincides with your orders. Lucky for ANBU captains everywhere, Inuzuka alphas are rare, and the gammas are uncommon.”

Minato tilted his head again. “I’ve never heard about the gammas.” She tugged on his hair again, making him shift a subtle five degrees southeast.

“Gammas are a new thing in the clan, I think,” Tsume said. This was one of the few things she remembered in absolute clarity before the Nara forest. It was the winter before, and Grandmother Shinzou had sat Tsume down with Nagumi in the kennels and showed her how to harness the dogs for carrying supplies. As she showed Tsume how the harnesses attached, she explained the alpha/beta/gamma dynamics. “Gammas are like lone wolves. They aren’t pack-oriented like the rest of the Inuzukas, and they tend to be male more often than not. The reason it’s new is because Konoha is the first time the clan has been able to settle in one place, instead of roaming the countryside like other shinobi clans, so Grandmother was able to study what becomes of our unclaimed sons. I guess before we just considered them defective alphas or something like that, when a gamma was a clanswoman.”

Tsume often saw her male cousins around Konoha, but they didn’t acknowledge her any more than she acknowledged them – except for Subaru, who was five years older than her and not a cousin, nor was he an alpha or a gamma. Subaru, like the rest of the Inuzukas, had a natural inclination towards dogs, and ad followed Tsume and Kuromaru for a while. Two weeks before Kakashi was born, Tsume got tired of being followed, so she and Kuromaru confronted Subaru. (It was more of an ambush than an actual confrontation, but Tsume wasn’t the sort to quibble over details.) He was a very large teenager, broad in shoulders with huge feet and hands, and he shuffled shyly as she glared up at him. He had the same swarthy olive-toned skin and dark hair that Tsume and Hidarime did, and the same familial scent of their mother, which marked him as one of Inuzuka Tsubaki’s four children.

“How do you talk to the dogs and how do they talk back?” Subaru had asked.

Subaru had been given a puppy by the old lady who lived on the floor beneath him. He was a civilian like his father, but the inclination towards canines was as bred into him as it was in Tsume. Even if the dog was never meant to be a ninken, Tsume was willing to help Subaru. She snuck away from home two nights in a row to teach basic cares and discipline. She thought she was doing rather well with what she had to work with and what she and Kuromaru could remember, before Grandmother caught her that third night…

Tsume wondered where Subaru and Jet were, and how they were doing. “Bog ahead!” She tugged on Minato’s hair. “Danzo-sensei, we’re going to have to either squeeze through the Jomae nin and the bog on a little strip of land, or take the really long way around the bog.”

“We take the long way.” Danzo still had a noticeable limp in his run, and didn’t trust anyone – not even the Jomae nin, who were supposed to be allies of Konoha. Tsume half-suspected that the reason their pace wasn’t as fast as when it had been just her and Danzo was because of that limp. Kushina and Minato certainly didn’t look like they were struggling to maintain the pace.

“This way!”

Minato sighed. “Can you not kick me in the sides when you do that? I’m not a horse.”

“No, but you’re a mooncalf, and calves are almost like horses.”

oOoOoOo

Tsume had identified half the Konoha ANBU occupying the relief station before they reached it. The only reason Tsume couldn’t identify the other half was because she didn’t remember or recognize them. “But they gotta be legit,” she told Danzo, “because Oyubi-chan is there, and she wouldn’t hang with a bunch of imposters. And she does smell upset, but that’s grief, which is different from, you know, being-captured-upset.” They were huddled in the forest outside the genjutsu perimeter and trip alarms that would alert ANBU of any trespassers. Dawn was just beginning, the sky streaking with flamingo and peach shades of pink. The woods were noisy with birds that were flying further south, and bugs that hadn’t yet been killed off by the harsh autumn frosts.

“Fair enough,” Danzo said. Nonetheless, he sent Jiraiya in first to alert the station of the newcomers while he and the preteens waited. Jiraiya didn’t return, but he sent out Minato’s two awaiting teammates to guide the rest of the group through the traps. Minato’s genin teammates, Aburame Hotaru and Sarutobi Osamu, were thrilled to see their teammate, but didn’t make any attempts to slap him on the back since Tsume was still hitching a ride. His teammates were pretty lousy, Tsume thought. They forgot to warn Minato to duck low, so her wild spikes of hair accidentally triggered a tripwire. She, Minato, and Kushina all got stuck several times with the released senbon; Danzo was able to dodge them effortlessly.

Luckily, Hotaru had equipped herself with the antidotes to the paralytic that coated the senbon, and administered it before their diaphragms seized up.

Just as they made their way through the parameter and were about to enter the crevice that was almost invisible in the jutting cliff, Oyubi pounced on Minato.

“Oh! It’s you!” Tsume was yanked off of Minato’s back into Oyubi’s painfully tight hug. “Oh, stars and ancestors – it truly _is_ you, and you’re alive!” Tsume sniffled at the scent of Oyubi’s tears as her cousin smoothed her hands over Tsume’s hair and face, caressing and prodding as if to assure herself that Tsume wasn’t just an elaborate genjutsu. Tsume couldn’t see Oyubi’s expression because it was hidden behind the painted ANBU mask, but there was no mistaking the scents of relief and joy, tainted heavily with grief.

Gosh, it really was nice to be wanted and missed. Tsume couldn’t wait until she got back to Kuromaru and Kakashi! Oyubi’s dog, a sleek black and tan-colored medium-sized hound named Himewari, barked a greeting and then stood on her back legs to lick at Tsume’s face, her wagging tail nearly a blur.

Danzo tapped Oyubi’s shoulder as he pressed forward to the crevice. “Breaking character,” he warned her in a low voice.

“Bite me,” Oyubi muttered defiantly, but in such a low voice only Tsume heard. There was another spike in the grief before Oyubi pulled away from Tsume. Grasping Tsume’s left hand in hers and asserting control over Himewari with a sharp point of her right, Oyubi led the adolescent shinobi through the crevice.

The relief station was a set of underground bunkers in a gigantic limestone cavern that was heavily guarded by multiple traps and only had the one entrance that was easy to defend. The crevice was so narrow that Danzo and Oyubi had to turn sideways to slip through, their clothes scraping loudly against the rough walls. None of the adolescents had Danzo’s bulk or Oyubi’s admirable bust, so they slipped through without a problem. Tsume followed gingerly with her hand still clasped in Oyubi’s, feeling every single sharp stone and twig beneath her bare feet.

Once they safely exited the crevice, they had to pause for Oyubi to reset the crevice’s traps. Then she led them through the labyrinth of underground caverns, bypassing even more traps and alarms. Tsume thought that having to circle a not-so-random stalagmite counterclockwise for two and a half rotations before skipping south twice to prevent triggering a layered genjutsu was really overkill. Then again, she figured, if anyone had the right to overkill, it was ANBU, especially if you had a relief station in the middle of a war, no matter how friendly an ally the country was.

Oyubi eventually led them to the main quarters which housed a rotating number of ANBU – fourteen currently, Tsume’s nose detected (not very easily though, given how the place smelled very heavily of old sulfuric acid), although there had been recent visits by many different non-ANBU teams, like Jiraiya’s. The main quarters were dimly lit by several oil laps, and appeared to consist of a very stark kitchen, a large dining room table that had a couple stacks of cards and a shogi board scattered on its surface, multiple straight-backed wooden chairs, and a magazine rack that held one crumpled and well-read _Chicken Ramen for the Shinobi Soul._

“Captain.”

Danzo didn’t halt at Oyubi’s voice as he entered the kitchen and began inspecting the contents in the cupboards and refrigerator.

“I have very important news that must be relayed to my cousin.” Oyubi reached for her mask.

Tsume froze. So did Danzo. Tsume felt her heart thudding as her mind went to her worst fear: Sakumo was dead, killed in the attack during which Kushina was abducted.

Danzo’s voice stopped Oyubi’s movement. “Stop.” His body was very relaxed as he looked over his shoulder, but his face was without expression and his eye seemed distant and flat. “The younger members of my team have been traveling rough and hard for the last several days. Tsume hasn’t recovered from her chakra exhaustion, and everyone is hungry. Unless the base is about to be ambushed and we require an immediate evacuation, any and all news can wait until after we’ve eaten.”

Oyubi dropped her hand away from her mask. She bowed first to Danzo, and then more deeply to Tsume. “Yes, sir. I shall return after your meal.” She left, quiet as a ghost with her footsteps silent but her scent shifting erratically with desperation, grief, and joy.

Himewari hesitated for a long moment, whining softly. _I want to stay with Mistress._

“Go,” Tsume told Himewari with a wave of her left hand. Himewari’s tail twitched in a half-wag before she trotted after Oyubi.

“It doesn’t sound like it’ll be good news,” Kushina whispered to Tsume. Then, in a louder voice to Danzo, “Sensei, could you use any assistance?”

“You three can sit down and rest. The other two – Sarutobi and Aburame – can help me put a meal together.”

“Should you be walking, sensei?” Hotaru asked with a concerned frown. Then the frown melted into wide-eyed fear at the hair-raising glare Danzo sent her, and her kikaichu buzzed loud for a brief moment. Tsume was just glad the glare wasn’t leveled at her, and that she was able to sit down in an unmoving chair. Minato was nice and all, but he wasn’t the greatest to ride, and she had to squeeze her legs uncomfortably-tight not to slide around. Her muscles still ached from the spasms.

“I’d like a really hot shower,” Kushina said, propping her elbows on the table and resting her head on her hands. “And to sleep on a comfy mat without any guys being near. You know, it’s kinda funny the simple things in life you wind up missing when you can’t get them.”

Tsume leaned back in her chair, pleased that her feet brushed the floor. She rested her right hand in her lap, glancing worriedly at it. Her swollen hand was still one unbroken shade of deep eggplant-purple, the sharp angles of vertebra trapped in the center of her palm digging into her flesh. It also smelled like roadkill. She was pretty sure most of the stench was from the vertebra, and not from actual gangrene or anything of the like.

Tsume decided that, no matter how much it hurt, she was going to pry her hand open and scrub it clean tomorrow morning. She folded her left arm on the table and rested her head on it, yawning as the tiredness washed over her body again. Her eyes fluttered shut, but only just for a moment because food sounded…

oOoOoOo

Tsume was shaken awake by a fussy mednin that Oyubi managed to find tucked away in a hidey-hole somewhere that doubled up as the sickbay. The mednin fussed and poked and prodded Tsume at great length, so she tried to ignore it as she attempted to eat the undercooked rice and overcooked sausage that Danzo had tossed together with way too much ginger and not enough garlic. It was hard because her chopsticks were awkwardly wielded in her left hand. The mednin – an unmasked, bespectacled, bald man with the unfortunate name of Nirami – evaluated her condition by sending waves of chakra through her body. It felt like stinging pelts of hail, battering against her sensitive nerves and distracted her from eating. Not that being distracted was all that hard.

Tsume tried not to think of how disappointed she was to realize that Danzo was a really lousy cook. It seemed like Danzo knew everything – like how to sniff things out properly, even when he wasn’t an Inuzuka, and how to hone your body and mind and heart into a really awesome weapon without weaknesses, and being able to temporary fix her seal, even when he was all aroused and didn’t have blood flowing to the correct head. However, she was beginning to suspect the whole “overcoming hunger” manner of training and disciplining the body was just to make up for his lousy cooking. 

Speculation of Danzo’s mediocre domesticate skills was interrupted by Nirami clapping his hands twice to attract everyone’s attention. “Is there anyone else besides Inuzuka-san in need of medical attention?”

Everyone turned at once to look at Kushina. Kushina stared back with her mouth crammed full of rice, cheeks bulging like a desperate chipmunk. “Whath?” she asked through her mouthful.

They turned back to Nirami, and Danzo spoke. “No. Just Tsume.”

“Then I require your immediate presence in my exam room for a more in-depth examination and diagnosis.”

Tsume blinked at him. “Why? I thought it was just chakra exhaustion.”

Nirami shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a pointed prod from his index finger. “ _Just_ chakra exhaustion, she says,” he muttered, with a downward pull of his mouth. His voice rose in volume. “ _Just_ chakra exhaustion is enough to require a further examination to clear the near-toxic levels of lactic acid still lingering in your body because you were very nearly in organ failure, not to mention healing the burned tenketsu and the broken bones, but you’re also anemic and…” He hesitated for a moment, his eyes dangerously sharp.

Tsume felt her heart stop for one moment as she thought about what else he could’ve detected – didn’t the antibiotics clear the chlamydia completely? Checking her for it was how Madame Kai had discovered… She was distracted again when Oyubi stepped forward and bowed deeply to Danzo. Oyubi still wore her mask, but looked oddly naked without her ninken at her side. Tsume wondered why Himewari was kept away.

“I still have very important news to share with Tsume-sama, and I feel that’s best done without an audience.”

Uh oh. When had she ever been considered Tsume- _sama_?

The expression on Danzo’s face was unreadable as he studied Oyubi over his cup of mostly-milk (slightly watered down with tea, Tsume noticed earlier) for a lengthy moment. Then he jerked his chin upward. “A moment with you, first.” He, Oyubi, and Nirami stepped away from the table and disappeared together beyond the corner of the kitchen.

Tsume poked at her overcooked sausage, and then dumped the contents of her dish into Minato’s empty bowl when she realized she had no appetite and no desire to eavesdrop on the three adults. Not after her deepest secret had been revealed the last time she eavesdropped. She briefly wondered where Jiraiya had disappeared to, since she couldn’t smell him anywhere in the caverns.

Minato stared at his bowl. “Uh…”

Kushina pointed her chopsticks at Minato’s bowl with a gleam in her narrowed eyes. A few grains of rice stuck to her chin. “If you don’t want that, I’ll take it.” Minato eyed Kushina, and then carefully nudged his bowl towards her while making sure his hand was nowhere between her and the offered food. Osamu sported bruises on his wrist from when he unwittingly reached between Kushina and the sausage.

Danzo and Oyubi returned without Nirami. Oyubi held her hand out to Tsume. “I’ll take you to the exam room,” Oyubi said with a gentle voice. Her face was unreadable behind the fox mask, but Tsume was able to smell the fear, grief, and a simmering edge of rage. Feeling like she was being led to a pit where Orochimaru lurked – although he was nowhere near – Tsume slid off the bench she shared with Minato, and reluctantly accepted Oyubi’s extended hand with her open left hand. Her right hand seemed to be weighed down by a heavy stone, even though it was just a rotting vertebra. She was led away through the twisted labyrinth of caves and caverns, following Nirami’s scent and distant lantern.

Nirami’s exam room was a curtained off section in the sickbay where three hospital beds and a metal stand on wheels were tightly crammed together. It had several shelves crudely carved from the stone walls, and misshapen wooden cabinets stuffed with an array of supplies. Tsume tried hard not to look at the metal surgical tools that were carefully lined up on a small wooden tray on top of one of the cabinets.

Oyubi never released Tsume’s hand as she coaxed Tsume onto the examining bed. Nirami closed the curtains around them and sat down on a wheeled stool. He leaned forward, hands open and loose as he rested his weight on his forearms and knees. “The Captain,” Nirami began with a pinched expression, “just informed us that you’ve spent the last four months undercover in an S-rank mission that’s outside our pay grade. If I inadvertently ask you a question that pertains to classified information on that mission, you are to immediately inform us that you cannot answer.”

Oyubi carefully released Tsume’s hand and pushed her mask up to rest on top of her head. Her pale skin was sweaty, and her fine black hair, cut severely at the level of her ears, clung to her cheeks. Her clan markings were the designated mahogany of the gamma. Oyubi’s elegant features favored her sire’s clan more than the Inuzuka clan. Her dark eyes were nearly unreadable. “The Captain said you could use your own judgment in regards to whether or not the answer is classified, that you’re smart enough to know.”

Tsume kicked her dangling feet and hunched her shoulders. It actually felt nice to hear that Danzo said she was smart, although Oyubi probably just paraphrased Danzo’s original message to make it sound nice. “Okay.” She expected Nirami to whip out a clipboard with papers on it. Instead, he clasped his hands in front of him. His scent was strangely lacking in emotion, as if he buried feelings so deep within that they couldn’t be touched.

“My initial examination revealed repeated sexual trauma, although there’s no indication of how long ago it happened.” 

Since both adults looked at Tsume expectedly, she shrugged. There was no point in denying it, and she wasn’t ashamed to have been a prostitute. “Yeah.”

“So how long _did_ the trauma happen?”

Grandmother Shinzou took her from Konoha… gosh, it must be close to eighteen week, now. Tsume quickly estimated how many days she and Grandmother spent traveling to Earth, plus the week of grooming she received before the auction, minus the combined nine days of running with Danzo and the others… Stupid little numbers. She really needed the fingers on her injured hand to get the right numbers. “Three and a half months?”

“So this happened nearly four months ago?”

Tsume kicked her feet again. “It started then.” Oyubi turned her face away as a shuddering wince crossed her face. It was almost gratifying to see the dawning horror and disbelief in Nirami’s face, and just a hint of corresponding scents from him.

“It _lasted_ nearly four months?” His mouth gaped open for a moment like a fish gasping for air, as if he were also gasping for words. Then his eyes narrowed. “Your S-rank mission was at a brothel.”

“That’s classified.”

He snorted. “A word to the wise, kid. Answering like _that_ only confirms suspicions. But it only makes sense – how many _sexually-explicit_ S-rank missions would otherwise involve a twelve year old?” His eyes briefly met Oyubi’s before he turned all attention back to Tsume. “Were you diagnosed or treated for any sexually transmitted diseases at that time?”

“I got antibiotics for chlamydia last month. It’s all cleared up now.”

Nirami straightened. “Are you aware that you were, at one time, pregnant?” He hesitated a moment. “How did it end?”

With a long hook, a pair of bloody forceps, and the unfortunate realization that there were far worse things than a penis or fingers that could be jammed up between her legs. Tsume looked down at her feet. The floor was a boring yellow-brown limestone, but she thought she saw some fine cracks in the stone.

“Tsume-sama…” That crack over there looked like a rabbit. “What Nirami-senpai means is did you miscarry? That’s not an unusual result for a girl your age when impregnated in dire circumstances.”

And that crack looked like the Hokage monument, if she turned her head just right. A wave of homesickness washed over Tsume as she thought of Konoha. When Oyubi’s hand touched her shoulder, she didn’t flinch. She had been well-trained, after all. “Madame…” Tsume nibbled her lip. Names were probably classified, since they knew she was at a brothel, but they couldn’t prove which one. “When I was treated for chlamydia, that’s when they found out I was pregnant. I guess I was seven weeks along.” Tsume vaguely understood the development of canine fetuses, but hadn’t quite made the connection with human fetuses yet. A puppy was a puppy was a puppy, after all. “They ordered a termination.” Madame Kai always looked regretful with everything she did, whether it was to heal or to harm.

Oyubi’s hand tightened. “You knew you were pregnant.”

“The smell kinda gave it away.” Tsume knew something was different when the odor of her hormones had shifted, and didn’t know at the time whether to be horrified, happy, or grateful that Inuzuka women made it a tradition to forbid involvement between sires and their daughters.

Her nose was good enough to tell her that the fetus was a girl. She wouldn’t have had to worry about abandoning the baby somewhere, given Grandmother’s wrath… she could’ve kept her daughter, and she would’ve loved her daughter, even if the little girl favored her sire’s bloodline limit with weird mouths.

Tsume thought of Kakashi the first time she held him, little and naked and covered with sticky fluids. She knew she made a really great aunt – Sakumo always said so – and Tsume secretly thought she was also a better mother than Hidarime-chan, even though Kakashi always seemed so much happier to see Hidarime than Tsume. She hoped it was because Hidarime wasn’t home very often, and that Kakashi would look just as happy to see Tsume when _she_ finally got back to Konoha. Him and Kuromaru. _Her_ puppies, and no one was ever going to take her puppies away from her again.

The emotional scents were making Tsume dizzy, between Nirami’s slowly-growing, still-somewhat numb horror, and Oyubi’s rage. Tsume looked up. “If it makes anyone feel better, being pregnant wasn’t supposed to be part of the mission, so, it makes sense that I wasn’t supposed to have a baby” No, that didn’t seem to really help soothe their rage, judging from the looks on their faces. Oops. Tsume sort of understood why people seemed so mad, but it was mostly because these types of experiences tended to make people mad when she overheard such discussions at Konoha. She just wasn’t used to people being mad on her behalf. After all, no one ever tried stopping or changing anything at Konoha, whenever Grandmother said or did something that hurt Tsume.

And the only ones who ever truly cared at Madame Haori’s House of Pleasure had been the dogs and Danzo.

Nirami shoved his glasses up his nose. “How…” He coughed to clear his throat. “Your anemia bothers me. How was your nutritional intake? Did they feed you well or were you deprived?”

“I gave my lunch to the dogs. Dinner wasn’t usually so bad.” The way to a dog’s heart was generally through its stomach, Tsume had learned. Dinner was whatever her patron that night wanted to share. As Oyubi’s anger and grief both flared at Tsume’s words, Tsume turned to her cousin. Oyubi still held Tsume’s shoulder, but she covered her face with her other hand and was taking deep breaths. “Who died, Oyubi?”

Oyubi’s breath hitched. She lowered her hand from her face. “How did…”

“You’re really sad. Something’s wrong, and you’ve never called me Tsume-sama before.” At least not any time that Tsume could _remember_ , which probably didn’t mean a lot. Nirami slid back from them to give more space, his wheels squeaking.

Oyubi crouched down so she looked up at Tsume. She took Tsume’s left hand into both of hers. Oyubi’s fingers were long and elegant looking; her nails were smooth, short crescents. Tsume’s hand looked stubby and dirty, the nails jagged because she chewed on them so often. “Tsume-sama… Eleven days ago, the enemies managed to plant a blast zone that severely injured several Konoha shinobi. The same one where they successfully abducted Kushina. Grandmother Shinzou is one of the wounded nin – and word has it that she’s dying. Your teammate, Kokoro, was also injured.”

Tsume’s first thought was how she could feed Grandmother some of her special-seasoned meatloaf and finish what the blast zone started. Her second thought was far more charitable towards Kokoro, wishing for her safety.

“There were several Konoha shinobi killed almost immediately, however.”

Tsume’s mind immediately veered to Sakumo. She smelled blood, and distantly realized that she gripped Oyubi’s hands so tightly that her claws pressed bloody furrows into Oyubi’s skin. Oyubi didn’t even flinch.

“I regret to report that Inuzuka Hidarime died in that attack. I’m so sorry for your sister’s death.”

oOoOoOo

Tsume received an iron injection for her anemia, another pelting wash of healing chakra, and a plaster cast that covered her hand from the knuckles to her elbow that thankfully required removing the vertebra from her grasp; her fingers were splinted individually to prevent compartment syndrome. Straightening her fingers and plastering her hand took up most of the day, Tsume only passed out twice from the pain, and Oyubi fetched dinner for Nirami and Tsume.

Nirami grumbled about how Oyubi’s ill-timed report interrupted the health history he was trying to obtain, but released Tsume after the various treatments. Oyubi assisted her in dressing into one of Oyubi’s clean sleeping shirts, and then tucked her into a bedroll that smelled more of Uchiha than it did of Inuzuka. She was left to her thoughts, which is probably not the best place for a brain-damaged simpleton like her, Tsume realized in retrospect.

She realized that Nirami’s lack of emotional scents was because he was emotionally numb. She stared upward into the dark, the silence broken by Kushina’s sleeping snores beside her. In an effort to give the two girls some privacy after the two of them had been for so long in the admittedly questionable company of grown men (their captors, although Oyubi had eyed Jiraiya when she said this), they were sheltered in a nook of one of the caverns. The overhanging ceiling was so low that stalactites brushed the tops of Tsume’s wild hair when she stood upright. The area was surprisingly warm compared to the rest of the caves and caverns, but she didn’t take much heed of the temperature as she considered her own numbness.

Tsume was just as numb as Nirami, and had been since Oyubi told her the news. She wasn’t sad, mad, upset, or happy to realize this. She couldn’t feel anything. Even when she tried to remember Hidarime’s smiling face, or her scent, Tsume felt utterly empty. She thought of broken hearts and broken brains, and wondered if everyone got it all wrong. Because when your brain was broken, you couldn’t remember anything, or understand numbers, or track two thoughts at once, and you had a constant headache the first few years that never went away except when Tsunade was there with her bodacious boobs and gentle hands and cool chakra.

When your heart was broken, you couldn’t feel anything. Except her right hand had been broken – multiple fractures, Nirami had explained as he put the cast on her hand from knuckles to elbow. _“It takes sheer and utter talent – and hardly the good kind – to break every bone in your hand, and I do mean **all** twenty-seven bones of your hand. And… and **where** did this homosapien vertebra come from?” _– and that was why it hurt so badly and she couldn’t pry her fingers open. So, clearly, broken things hurt, unless they were hearts.

Tsume rolled to her side, grateful that Nirami had eased up the gigantic throb that made her entire body ache, and studied Kushina’s face in the dark. Wanting to see more clearly despite the low light a distant lantern emitted, Tsume boosted the chakra at her eyes, which was easy enough to do when her olfaction was only at ten percent and her chakra levels were recovering slowly.

Kushina was drooling into her blanket. Tsume reached out and touched a lock of red hair. It was soft, silky, and fine, as it slid through her fingers, like Oyubi’s hair was… like Hiderime-chan’s hair had been. The numbness cracked.

A memory – distant, but clear in the way her memories never were after the Nara forest – came floating to the surface of Tsume’s thoughts. Her hands were clumsy and her fingers kept tripping over each other as she tried to braid Hiderime’s waist-length hair. Hiderime’s hair was soft and slippery, almost as if made of water. Hiderime knelt in front of the full-length mirror and she was laughing as Tsume growled around the brush handle she held between her teeth. The bedroom door swung open, and Grandmother stepped through. The smile that lit up Grandmother’s face erased lines and years as she stepped forward. “Here, cross the strand here, Tsume-chan.” And Grandmother’s hands, callused and scarred, were gentle as they patiently guided Tsume’s.

Tsume curled up in a tight ball, clutching her blankets tight. Her eyes stung and she wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. In the darkness of the cave, Tsume felt like she was alone in the void that Orochimaru had warned her about. A void of nothingness. She wondered – would Kakashi cry when he learned his mother was dead? He always seemed so happy to see Hidarime with his face lighting up and eyes shining, as he ran to her with his arms open. 

Even the old stirring of jealousy – _what does Hidarime have that I don’t, besides an unbroken brain? **I’m** the one who takes care of Kakashi, **I’m** the one who’s been his mother _– remained dead at the thought. 

Tsume concentrated on the numbness; it seemed to grow, spreading through her body in a rush. She felt the hollow echo of her empty insides clenching at the thought of being so utterly alone in the world, of how her sister was gone, and how many alphas were left as possible clan heirs? Alphas had the worst survival rate because they were always leaping to the fore to protect their pack. Tsume sometimes wondered if she ever truly felt fear, even before her traumatic brain injury, because alphas _were_ notoriously fearless.

(“ _I have seen the void, child, and it has seen me – **it is inside of me**._”)

Feeling restless, Tsume sat upright. She heard Kushina stir a moment in her sleep, and concentrated on the scents all around her, boosting her olfaction by just a fraction. After a moment of consideration, she gathered her blanket and pillow, and left Kushina. Tsume had a void like Grandmother and Orochimaru, and she only now realized just how horrible voids are. It wasn’t that they were filled with terrible things, but that they emptied a person into a numb shell that had no bottom, and voids had no way of _ever_ being filled, no matter how many puppies you threw into them.

Kushina-chan could never know about the void, because the void might get inside of Kushina-chan, too.

Tsume carefully navigated her way through the dark with her increased vision, bypassing the traps by following the scents of adults, faint beneath the ever-prevalent sulfuric acid, who knew their way around the traps. She eventually found Danzo sharing a space with Jiraiya. Jiraiya was asleep, curled up in a ball with his arms wrapped around his pillow. Danzo wasn’t, as he lay flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling.

“No.” Danzo’s voice was harsh in the dark before she could reach him or ask for help.

Tsume tightened her grip on her blanket and pillow, ignoring the burning throb in her right hand. Danzo had a void, too, she just knew it. But Danzo had somehow managed to make the void an important tool or a viable weapon, instead of just becoming an empty shell incapable of love and kindness like Orochimaru and Grandmother. “But I—”

“ _No._ ”

Tsume had the sudden urge to look over her shoulder to see if there was a kunai poised to strike between her shoulder blades. She shuffled back a step, hesitated a moment, and then retreated without another word. Danzo didn’t want her and wasn’t going to help her. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with Tsume ever since Jiraiya permanently took care of her seal… ever since Jiraiya told Danzo about the forced abortion.

She felt like such a wasted failure. She was used to not being wanted – the rejection shouldn’t have stung the way it did. Being wanted had been nice while it lasted, even if it was fake and seal-induced, because Danzo didn’t hurt her nearly as much as the others had. In her numbness, she figured it was appropriate to be cast into the dark – as black and as empty like the void within – by the only person she had hoped would help.

Tsume wandered through the caverns a few more minutes before finding a stalagmite that looked comfortable enough to lean against. The limestone was cold and rough beneath her bare feet, and the stalagmite even more so against her back. She hugged her pillow and blanket close as the numbness took on a chilled sensation. She didn’t want to sleep, because she’d have to close her eyes, and then the darkness would smother her. It was like the void was waiting, and she was poised on the edge of it. If she closed her eyes and fell asleep… would she ever be able to leave the void? Would she plummet head-first down into its unending depths?

How much of herself would she lose?

_I don’t want to turn into Grandmother._ The thought was almost overwhelming in the gut-sinking revulsion and horror that not even numbness could deaden. She imagined treating Kakashi with the same disdain and hatred, of calling him a simpleton, or striking his face if he turned it smiling towards her, as if she could slap the smile right off, of shaking him until his teeth rattled while saying it was _his_ fault that she hated him… Her eyes stung as Kakashi’s face morphed into her own. 

“Tsume?”

She slowly lifted her gaze towards an approaching pool of light.

Minato held a shuttered lantern in his hand. He seemed to glow in the dark, his hair like a blaze of dandelion fluff beneath the summer sun, and his eyes like two bright blue winter moons. “You can’t sleep out here. You’ll get cold.”

She was surprised to find tears dribbling down her face. Mooncalf-san was always so nice to her, and for no reason! Sakumo was nice, but that was because she loved and cared for his son. Tsume didn’t think he would so close and as caring if there was no Kakashi. Hidarime had been nice and did her best to pick up the pieces, but she never seemed to be around when Grandmother was at her cruelest. Yuu was nice, but that was because Orochimaru had ordered Yuu to prep her for this horrible mission. The Hokage was nice, but that was because he was the Hokage, and you had to be nice right back at him. Jiraiya was nice, but Jiraiya had no taste and was nice to anything with two possible X chromosomes. Aunt Natsumi… Aunt Natsumi truly loved her, but Tsume thought it was might also because they were alike as clan pariahs with their brain injuries.

Minato walked toward Tsume. His lantern swung and heavy shadows danced through the cave. The closer Minato and his light approached, the further the darkness and void retreated. Tsume hunched her shoulders and shrank down. Upon reaching her side, Minato raised the lantern overhead and he crouched low. “What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice dropping into a concerned whisper.

Tsume’s bottom lip trembled. Emotions came rushing back as Minato’s light pooled around her and the void receded. She thought of Danzo’s refusal, and suddenly her chest hurt, like someone punched her in her broken heart.

Tsume just wanted to be wanted. “My sister’s dead,” she whispered, and her memories finally bounced in her head like echoes through the caverns.

Hidarime, who had rested Tsume’s hands on her pregnant belly and let Tsume feel the flutter of movement. Hidarime, who let Tsume pick out Kuromaru from the latest batch of puppies and promised that Kuromaru would be her memory when he got older. Hidarime, who had rocked Tsume and read fairytales to her after the Nara forest, when Tsume couldn’t even remember how to walk.

Hidarime, who always loved and wanted Tsume, would never again be around to love and want Tsume.

“I’m sorry.”

“Grandmother just took me away, and I never got a chance to say good bye.” Tsume covered her eyes with her left hand and curled into a ball, unable to stop the tears. “And then G-Grandmother told everyone that _I_ had been killed, so my s-sister died without knowing the truth.”

Minato didn’t hesitate to catch Tsume’s unbroken hand in his own. His hand was warm as he uncovered her eyes. “I met your sister a few weeks ago. She never stopped believing that you were out there somewhere. She said that it’s the greeting that’s the most important, not the good bye.”

Tsume covered her face with her pillow so Minato couldn’t see her crying. She had already passed out, broke her hand, and had to be carried on his back for nearly three days. She didn’t want to be seen weaker than what she already was.

Minato tugged her to her feet, draped her blanket over a shoulder, and then led her away from the stalagmite. “Come on. No one should be alone right now.”

She didn’t know why Minato had to be the one who was nice, instead of Danzo. But at least Minato, with his lantern and his ridiculous dandelion hair and his gentle smile, somehow chased the void away. “W-why?”

He threw her a knowing look over his shoulder. “Because when you’re alone, that’s when no one’s there to keep you afloat when you’re drowning in your emotions. And you’re having a hard time treading that water, Tsume.” He slipped his hand free from hers, and looped his arm around her shoulders. “Let me throw you a lifeline, please. It’s what we need to do for each other.”

Tsume’s crying softened into sniffles by the time Minato brought her back to the nook where Kushina was still asleep. She didn’t protest when he settled beside her on the bedroll and spread her blanket over both of them. Even after he extinguished the lantern, she saw the dim afterimage of his dandelion hair behind her eyelids, burning like the distant sun. It was enough to keep the void at bay. 

Tsume found and squeezed Minato’s hand in the dark. “Thanks,” she whispered. Then, after a moment, “You sure you’re younger than me? You seem to be a better adult than most adults I know.” Certainly better than that butthead, Danzo.

Minato squeezed her hand back. “Jiraiya-sensei said I was born forty years old.”

Tsume tried to imagine a forty-year old Minato covered in birthing fluids like Kakashi had been. It was a disturbingly silly thought, and she found herself giggling at the image. “How would he know? He’s probably stuck at fourteen.”

“I suppose that’s why I was born forty years old. _Someone_ has to be the adult.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love exploring minor canon characters. Namikaze Minato is especially fascinating. I study this guy, and I wonder... where the hell did this perfection come from? Most god-like canon characters are really, really irritating with their perfection, but Minato is just a genuine, really nice guy. Not a Nice Guy, but just a really nice guy who goes out of his way to make his friend feel better, because he's the sort of guy who wants you to feel better, and he's not going it because it makes him feel better for performing a good deed. I'm rather fascinated with his characterization with how Minato could be so talented, so strong, and so skillful.
> 
> And then there's Tsume. Who is so not perfect.
> 
> This will later appear in the story: _[The Raikage] was starting to suspect that the gods had taken one look at how freakishly talented, strong, fast, and intelligent Namikaze Minato would be, and decided to create Inuzuka Tsume, because someone had to keep the man humble somehow. Even if it was just via dill pickle thievery._
> 
> I enjoy the contrast between these two in this story, with Minato's kind perfection, and Tsume's sympathetic flaws. So while Minato embraces the role that the gods assign him with all the grace and dignity that a superb character like him would be blessed with, there lies Tsume, ensuring that any ego that develops is effectively popped. It's a tough job, but someone has to play the role of the Jester... (One could argue the same for Kakashi, as far as his perfections as such an amazing warrior is concerned, but he has some extreme personality flaws that definitely show up in canon that we never see emulated in Minato.)
> 
> I am also curious about the thoughts of my readers... all the the half a dozen who's managed to make it through the admittedly painful Alpha Years. You people are equipped with some pretty strong stomachs. I solute you.


	15. Alpha Years - Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I complain about geography, yet? Because if I don't complain about geography, then I'm going to complain about Kishimoto's inability to keep a decent timeline. (I will complain about the inconsistant timeline in another chapter.)
> 
> I can't figure out what's going on with the weather and the geography. I can't figure out distance and travel time in the Elemental Nations. In writing this story that spans multiple countries, it's really hard to be consistent with distance and what weather should be like based on the macro- and microclimates, and the influence of the oceans on the weather and climates, because Kishimoto is inconsistent with his own world. The inconsistencies show up more easily in the written word than it does in manga, I suspect. Some things don't translate well between different medias. I have researched a lot on topography and geography and climates. I like to research. I spent two days researching bees, just so I could write a small scene of the Fire Daimyo beekeeping and lavishing praise on his beloved bees, as Kushina accidentally inhales and swallows a bee.
> 
> So, you know what? I'm going to blame the effects of chakra on nature. And Kaguya. She doesn't have any role to play in this story, except to take the blame for the inconsistencies of geography and weather. Someone has to take one for the team, and Tsume is feeling a little too battered to keep taking one for the team. We'll let the Rabbit Goddess feel special.
> 
> I swear Kishimoto just reached the point where he started doing drugs for plotlines and was like, fuck it, I'm going with that idea while under the influence of LSD.
> 
> Also, the Lands of Here and There are canon (although I suspect they're anime-exclusive), but I can't make heads or tails of the official maps I have found. Or maybe they're unofficial maps, and that's why they make no sense.
> 
> (It's not that I think Kishimoto is a lousy story teller - he's not. Kishimoto created a very rich, vibrant world, and his characterization is spot-on and consistent with the characters he likes, and I don't think the inconsistencies are so much flaws in canon as it is just a sign that he was still fleshing out the world and playing around with establishing rules. Like the first time we see Kakashi summon - he had to apply blood to a scroll, whereas in later scenes, summons are used with a combination of blood and chakra. Well. Except for those scenes in the middle of the Chuunin Exam, where a bunch of Sound nin were attempting to summon with fuuinjutsu written on the ground... okay, the storytelling is shaky... Anyway, I'm just saying that it's hard to keep things straight and consistent when you're publishing ongoing work by the month, whereas with a novel, you can go back fifty thousand words and add in that scene you didn't realize you needed to make the plot work eighteen chapters in the future. I don't think he's a bad story teller. He just could've done a better job making well-organized bullet points.)

The adolescent ninjas were awakened the next morning by Jiraiya. Minato snapped awake at Jiraiya’s approach, Kushina flipped over onto her stomach and snorted something about “five more minutes, Kokoro-chan,” and Tsume buried her nose in her pillow. “ _You’ve_ been busy,” she told Jiraiya darkly. “And so has Oyubi-chan.” At least Oyubi had loads of fun, judging by the floating haze of her pheromones and endorphins clinging to Jiraiya’s skin.

Jiraiya looked solemn and slightly smug as he wagged a finger at her. “A gentleman shouldn’t ignore the needs of a grieving woman. And having thoroughly attended to her needs, I’m supposed to deliver you to Danzo-sensei.”

“ _Way_ too much info, you old pervert.” Tsume’s imagination did just fine with the information her nose provided; she didn’t need any auxiliary details his words provided. Tsume glanced sideways at Minato, whose face was burning bright red. “You might wanna stay away from the weapons stock room.” She ignored Jiraiya’s twitching eyebrow as she reached for a pair of sturdy sandals that had been commandeered the day before from Hotaru. “And don’t borrow the oil that’s _supposed_ to be used for sharpening kunai.”

“Hey, it doesn’t irritate mucous membranes!” Jiraiya declared defensively.

Kushina sat upright. Her glorious red hair was tangled and floating from static electricity. “Oil? Do I want to know?” She squinted a bleary gaze at Jiraiya. “Sounds kinky.”

“And how would you know what that word even means?” Jiraiya demanded, crossing his arms in front of himself and trying unsuccessfully to look scandalized.

“Oh, _please_ , sensei. Spare me the shock.” Kushina waved her hand dismissively. “Kokoro-chan and her brothers have been very open and educational. They said the difference between sexy and kinky was the difference between the feather and the whole blasted chicken.” Everyone stared at her for a long, awkward moment, and Minato’s face continued to burn red. Tsume wondered how a man could have sex with a chicken, unless he had a really, really small cock. Then she wondered if maybe chickens were a euphuism for cocks in general…

“What on earth has Sakumo been letting you girls learn? Never mind. I need to borrow Tsume and her wonderful nose here.” Jiraiya swung his arm open and gestured with his hand. “Danzo-sensei wants to update gathered information that I can send to Orochimaru by way of my summon. That will hopefully make up a bit for the delay we’ve had with Kushina’s capture and rescue, and Tsume’s chakra exhaustion.”

Tsume pushed down her resentment as she stood upright. It wasn’t like she was the only one whose injuries had slowed them down. Granted, Danzo had shoes and she didn’t, but it still wasn’t fair to pin all the blame on her – Danzo was such a _butthead_. She left her blanket with Minato, who was raising his hands in surrender when Kushina belatedly realized he had somehow managed to sneak into their company once again.

Tsume silently followed Jiraiya as he carefully and slowly led her through the cavern system. Her body was aching again now that most of Nirami’s treatment had worn off, and her right hand throbbed inside its cast. There was also a spot on the back of her knuckles and hand that itched really badly, and she attempted wriggling the fingers of her left hand under the plaster to scratch. Her fingers were unfortunately too short, and there wasn’t enough free room in the cast to successfully rub the back of her hand against the plaster. Jiraiya led her out of the caverns, and Tsume was dismayed to see that the sun hadn’t even risen yet.

“You got me out of bed _how_ early?” She kept the volume of her indignant question to a loud whisper that didn’t carry through the thick underbrush of golden-leaved bushes and still-green ferns. Jiraiya didn’t answer as he carefully looked around and beckoned her close. Tsume regretted leaving her blanket with Minato as she shivered in the cool morning air. The temperatures were more temperate in the south-eastern border of Whirlpool than Earth, a microclimate that was unusually warm despite being early December. Tsume bashed the mosquitoes that sought out her left elbow, and then regretted such as the wave of pain washed through her right hand.

“Follow me carefully,” Jiraiya said once Tsume had joined his side, swallowing the whimper she wanted to make. “We’re going around the patrols and various traps, and I don’t want you getting hit with poisoned senbon again.” Tsume nodded her head obediently.

Jiraiya led her up the hillside through the lush forest, careful to avoid the traps. Tsume was more careful about how she removed mosquitoes before they could bite. Tsume also didn’t have to tell Jiraiya where the patrolling sentries were, as he was able to avoid them easily with his own abilities. Tsume marveled at the skill of this man, studying his broad back as he paused, crouching down. He often made others around him assume he was a buffoon, when in reality: he was an amazing shinobi. (She briefly wondered if Minato was the same, and then…nah. He would always be Mooncalf to her.)

Then Tsume realized that Jiraiya’s exceptional skills of sneaking around and not getting caught had probably been developed and honed at the women’s side of the hot springs. He was instantly recategorized as a buffoon in her mind.

Jiraiya turned around and faced Tsume. He raised one eyebrow at her expression. “I see that you’re thinking.” He hesitated a moment, and then flashed a tight-lipped smile. “Why do I have the sudden urge to make a run?”

She glared. “I just realized that you’re good at sneaking around so you can spy on women, you _lech_.”

Far from being offended or ashamed, Jiraiya’s face and scent brightened with amusement. “Danzo believes that all _things_ have the potential to be fashioned into viable weapons. _I_ believe that every moment has the potential to provide training experience.” He crouched down so he was eyelevel with Tsume. “These are the philosophies that make legendary shinobi – the attitude that separate the quick from the dead. It may not seem like much, but it gives us an unexpected edge over our enemies. Just like _you_ have an unexpected edge.”

Tsume brushed the fingertips of her right hand against her nose, disturbing a mosquito from her cheek. “This, right? And why do the bugs like me more than you?”

He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Because you’re sweeter than me, obviously. The sensitivity of your nose _is_ certainly an unexpected edge – but that’s to be expected from an Inuzuka, no matter how strong. I don’t know if anyone truly can appreciate the power of olfaction in general when humans are such visual creatures.” He tapped her toe. “I was actually referring to your siren seal.”

“My siren seal?” Tsume shifted her feet, unable to hide the embarrassment regarding her discolored toenail and the memories of the brothel.

Jiraiya held both hands into the air, fingers splayed wide. “Now that we’re alone, I’m going to give you information on the seal that I swear upon my life I will not share with anyone you do not specifically tell me to. I won’t even breathe a word of this to Hokage-sama.” He hesitated a brief moment. “Danzo, Orochimaru, and I are the only ones who have studied your siren seal and understand what it does – or used to, since Danzo thinks it doesn’t work anymore. I’m going to borrow a page from Danzo’s book and tell you that your seal has the potential of being a very deadly weapon, if you choose to use it.”

Tsume turned her feet inward – pressed her knees tightly together. She had concentrated the last two days on not thinking of the vivid memories that overwhelmed her mind before she passed out from chakra exhaustion. “I dunno. I can get the information even better with my nose, so I don’t have to… seduce enemies, you know.” If she was ever forced to publicly admit anything, it would be that she very much liked not spreading her knees wide and allowing someone to rut against her body. She was grown to dislike the odor of semen.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking of information, and there’s more to seduction than just sex.” Jiraiya hesitated a moment, studying her face. “Look – have you ever heard of the legend of the Whirlpool sirens?” 

“Whozzawhat?”

He sighed. “I thought not.” He folded his legs beneath himself, and then patted the ground. “Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable. This is probably the only time it’s just going to be just the two of us without the risk of eavesdropping, and I want you to _fully_ understand your potential.”

Tsume gingerly sat down. The ground was covered with a thick, damp moss that made her butt feel cold and wet. A cluster of ferns tickled her face when a gentle wind drifted through the forest, so she batted them away. Then she batted at mosquitoes. Shouldn’t the frosts have killed them of yet?

“The sailors of Wave and Whirlpool share a legend of sirens that lure sailors to their death. The sirens are beautiful sea maidens who…” Jiraiya paused in his gesture, where he had been indicating a vaguely roundish shape with his hands. He eyed Tsume with his hands frozen in the air. “Well, anyway, the sirens would perch themselves upon rocks jutting from the sea, and they would sing. The hypnotic beauty of their songs would attract the attention of the sailors, who ignores their dangerous surroundings in order to approach closer to the sound and the sight of, um….” He eyed Tsume again.

She eyed him back. “This story is about naked women. Why am I not surprised? And yes, I know the mechanics of sex. I engaged it quite frequently these last few months, and I know enough to know that you know what you’re doing, based on how happy you made Oyubi-chan.”

“Okay, first of all, _we_ ,” Jiraiya indicated the two of them by pointing back and forth, “are never going to discuss the mechanics of sex. Ever. I certainly don’t need to hear a twelve year old compliment me on my technique, because that’s just disturbing, understand?”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Then don’t have sex where I can smell it.”

“You can smell _ink-stained sugar_ from almost a thousand kilometers away – I may as well become a celibate if that’s my standard.”

“Okay, fair enough.”

“Anyway, _I’m_ not the one who made up the legends on the sirens; I just study them because I _like_ folklore, and, actually,” Jiraiya blushed, and wasn’t that a bizarre sight to see, as he shyly poked his fingers together, “I like to rewrite legends into more modern versions that explore lore and legends with characterization and plot. Look,” he said rapidly, wagging his fingers in Tsume’s face, “everyone needs to have a safe hobby that lets them de-stress, and mine is writing. Don’t judge me.”

Tsume crossed her eyes at his wagging fingers. “Okay, okay, Jiraiya-sensei…” Then she added, “I don’t judge you. I like to de-stress with cooking and playing around with spices.”

He grinned at her, and tapped her nose. “I bet I would love to try some of your cooking. Anyway, I’m trying to not be explicit and make you uncomfortable about this legend. Now, the sailors are experienced seafaring men who know the dangers and treachery of the sea. But the lure of the sirens would override the men’s good sense, and the men would crash and sink their boats on the rocks. Now, the sailors of Wave claim that the sirens would wait for the men to drown before eating them.”

“The sailors have my sympathy.” Tsume squashed a mosquito that managed to successfully bite her knee, and smeared blood down her leg from it. She swiped the blood away with the pointed edge of her fingernail.

Jiraiya ignored her. “The sailors of Whirlpool, however, claim that the sirens would rescue the drowning sailors, and use their enchantments to turn the sailors into fellow sea creatures.”

Tsume scrunched her nose up. She knew where the topic of this story was heading. “I thought you said that the sirens were sea maidens.”

Jiraiya tilted his head in thought for a moment, and then twitched, as if turning his mind away from its wandering track. She caught a whiff of desire, but it wasn’t for her. Jiraiya’s lack of desire towards her actually lifted Tsume’s spirit. It made her feel like a normal preteen. “Anyway, the point is, _seduction_ is more than just recon and Intel, and doesn’t have to be _just_ sex. Seduction is an allure that captivates a person’s interest, and commands attention. At its most basic, your seal is an enchantment for men. Once their attention is caught, they become entangled within your snares.” Jiraiya traced the knuckles on Tsume’s left hand. “I cannot begin to express the power you now hold.” He dropped his hand away from her body. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t remove the seal, and it has a suicide design that deteriorates any modification to essentially turn it off. However, I found a loophole that allowed me to attach a modification that lets you control the _strength_ of the seal. Danzo knows that the seal is on mute, but I didn’t tell him that you can adjust the strength, that you have the ability to unmute the seal as you will, like fiddling with the volume on the radio.”

Jiraiya studied Tsume’s face as he made his announcement. Tsume remained silent. She heard the twittering calls of lingering birds, and the twittering bird-like calls between two ANBU agents communicating with each other. Her knuckles beneath the cast were itching again. She attempted to wiggle a finger under the cast to scratch, but she hadn’t gained any more room since her last attempt.

Jiraiya seemed to realize that she didn’t understand well enough to appreciate her curse-turned-gift. “Any questions?”

Tsume nibbled on the edge of the cast. Scraping the plaster with her teeth didn’t help the itch either. And it tasted bad, too. She didn’t necessarily want to have anything to do with the seal, but she vaguely remembered how Danzo told her the second time he modified her seal that her body, mind, and heart were her ultimate weapons. The seal was part and parcel with her body, now, which meant that it was part of her array of ultimate weapons. It was, she figured, like a rabid animal, except now it was on a leash, and she got to decide when to drop the leash.

Tsume finally looked up at Jiraiya. “What do you mean controlling the seal’s strength?”

Jiraiya swept a misquote off her cheek. “It’s kinda like how Danzo explained to you the strength of your sense of smell. How you can make it fifty percent of its maximum, or a hundred, depending on how much chakra you concentrate to your nose. We talked about you, in case you’re wondering. The same with the siren seal. I have the default setting for the strength modification set at zero percent. At a low level, like fifteen percent, the seal won’t trigger unbridled lust in men – it’ll just be an attraction that incites their curiosity and makes you… desirable. One that you can lure them in with, like a distant siren song. Perhaps it’s not information we want from the person you’re luring in, but the actual person. Like a missing nin with a bounty on his head.”

Tsume had a brief image flash through her mind – she was seated naked on a rock with waves crashing all around, and Danzo was sailing towards her in a boat, the expression on his face the same as that night in the brothel when she found him sneaking along the ceiling. She pressed her knees tightly together at the mental image, then shooed away more insects. “Are you sure it would be like _that_?”

“…Reasonably sure.” He shrugged. “It’s like developing any new jutsu or seal. You can speculate until the cows come home, but you aren’t going to actually _know_ until you test it out.” He waved his hand dismissively. “ _And_ you’re not allowed to test out the ability and limits of the seal until you’re at least thirty years old.”

Tsume imagined herself as a thirty year old siren. In her mind’s eye, she was as tall as Jiraiya, she had a massive bust to rival Tsunade’s, and her hair was smooth like Hidarime-chan’s had been. “A lot could happen between now and when I’m thirty. That’s…” She subtracted quickly with her fingers, and was affronted. “That’s eighteen years!” She mentally added a lot of grey hair to her image. “I’m not waiting until I’m thirty!”

“Twenty-eight, then.”

Tsume poked Jiraiya’s kneecap. “Fourteen.”

“Certainly not. _Especially_ with the involvement of puberty. Twenty-nine.”

“You added an extra year!” She attempted to pinch Jiraiya’s thigh, just above the kneecap. Attempting to pinch flesh that was solid muscle was next to impossible. She patted her hand against the muscle in appreciation and envy of the solid heaviness. “Oh, hey. You’re a stud under those ridiculous clothes, aren’t you?”

He swatted her hand away with a scandalized huff and a dismayed twitch of his bushy eyebrows. “You—! Just for _that_ , thirty-five!”

Tsume narrowed her eyes, and then did some more quick mathematical calculations on her fingers. Lessee, divided by nine, carry the three... She gnawed at the plaster again as the wicked itch reminded her that it was _still_ just beyond her reach. “That’s in dog years, right?”

“Look, Tsume-chan. I know your clan is all about canines, but that’s taking it a little far, don’t you think?”

Tsume tugged at the moss. Then she picked up a dead bush branch and studied it for a moment. “Most Inuzuka die before they hit forty,” she said without looking at Jiraiya. “Grandmother, Aunt Boshi, Aunt Natsumi, they’re the unusual survivors.” She slid the branch into the space between her cast and hand, and finally managed to scrape the itch into submission. “What good does it do to hand me a weapon that I can spend a lifetime honing, and then tell me not to use it until I’m near my expiration date?” When Jiraiya remained silent, Tsume poked him with her branch.

Jiraiya was pleased. “Because your first weapon should always be your mind.”

Tsume winced as his words stung, and hunched her shoulders. “Well, there’s a lost cause.” She tossed the branche morosely to the ground.

He clicked his tongue and touched her shoulder with one gentle hand. “I didn’t mean that as a putdown. Your mind is… unconventional. So you’ve got a few shortcomings, but good shinobi don’t allow themselves to be limited by such – just look at Danzo. He only has one eye, but he can still fight better than most Hyuuga with their almost-limitless vision. I bet most ninja can be defeated with half your brain tied behind your back.”

“I don’t _have_ half a brain to tie behind my back.”

“So?”

Thinking in numbers and math didn’t help with the whole half-the-brain thing, but Tsume figured she sort-of got what Jiraiya was trying to tell her. “Okay. So developing my thinking skills would be better than developing my seal.”

“Wrong. They should be developed together. My sensei – _our_ Hokage – always says the best ninja achieves _Heaven_ and Earth. If you lack one, you must seek the other, and only that way can you obtain both. Heaven is your mental strength.” He tapped her forehead. “Earth is your physical strength.” He tapped her right hand in its cast.

Tsume thought a long moment, one finger pressed against her lips and both elbows flapping to keep the mosquitoes distracted. She tossed out his words and kept the ideas, and sorted through them. She turned the ideas around in her mind, until something clicked into place. “And a good shinobi must be able to use _all_ weapons at her disposal, whether it’s her mind, or her seal.” She narrowed her eyes. “A good shinobi must not be limited by age.”

He grinned at her. “Now you’re _thinking_. But a good shinobi should be proficient in the basic skills before moving on to the complicated, and your seal is very complicated.”

She struggled with the concept for another moment, and then turned the idea inside out. If time wasn’t a factor and skill was… She crossed her arms resolutely in front of herself and gave Jiraiya a stern look as her mind went down the path of least resistance (it didn’t make her head hurt as much). “I get to work with my seal when I become chuunin.” Unless she somehow wound up like the Eternal Genin. In which case, she’d renegotiate the terms with Jiraiya when she turned eighteen. He wouldn’t be able to tell her no then… especially if he was the first person she tried the seal on.

Jiraiya ruffled her wild hair. “Fair enough. But you have to test your seal out on someone who knows about it and agrees to be your guinea pig, before you try it out on the enemy.”

Ah hah!

“And I have to pre-approve the person you want to test it on before you tell them anything.”

Double ah hah! This lined up perfectly with her own nefarious plot, so Tsume agreed, and they stood up together. She patted off the clinging moss from her backside, annoyed that the moisture had soaked through her clothes.

“Now that we’ve got that subject covered, we still need to meet up with Danzo.”

Jiraiya turned away and continued through the forest. Tsume sighed and reluctantly followed after, embarrassed with the thought of facing Danzo after he had so abruptly dismissed her the night before. Jiraiya eventually led her to the top of a sweeping hill. Danzo stood beneath the shade of a maple tree crowned in just enough bright red leaves that frosts hadn’t managed to shock off the broad branches. Unsurprisingly, the mosquitoes apparently liked Danzo even less than Jiraiya. Danzo leaned against the broad trunk like a blot of darkness, his scent mingling with his surroundings like he belonged. Tsume studied the leaves for a moment, feeling drab and plain before such rich autumn splendor. She self-consciously touched her hair with her left hand, and thought of Hidaime and Kushina’s smooth locks of hair, fluttering in the wind.

After a moment, Danzo stepped away from the trunk and silently beckoned her forward with a crook of his finger. Tsume immediately went to him as he crouched down. His hands flashed through several seals before he touched Tsume’s forehead lightly with two fingers. A cool sensation washed over her body. “A genjutsu to keep the bugs away.” He twirled his hand. “Face that way,” he said. His voice was a hushed whisper, barely audible above the birds’ morning song. Tsume obeyed.

Jiraiy’s face scrunched up. “Oh man – you can use a genjutsu? I’ve been channeling this nature chakra all this time with the risk of turning myself into a block of stone, when I could be using a simple genjutsu instead?” With a pout, Jiraiya stepped close, and then crouched down to Tsume’s right, just beyond reach. She didn’t know why he seemed so upset; he hadn‘t been channeling enough nature chakra to effect his scent.

Danzo settled a sturdy hand on Tsume’s shoulder. His whispered breath stirred her hair. “The Intel you obtained in the brothel is a few weeks old, by now. Still useful, but not as much as immediate Intel. I need you to maximize your sense of smell to one hundred percent, and seek out those scents that you detected in the brothel. I’m going to need details of forces, surroundings, distance if possible, anything you think would be useful, especially if they’re still located in Waterfall.”

Tsume nodded her head – this was it! She could prove that she was useful, that she wasn’t just a silly little overemotional girl scared of something in the dark when Danzo had turned her away, even though her sister was dead and that wasn’t just _nothing_ – and then braced herself for the overwhelming onslaught as she pushed almost all of her chakra into her nose, far past the threshold of where the world didn’t quite spin. The world was suddenly gigantic to her senses, magnified to unbelievable proportions. She ignored the burning agony at the top of her scalp, the pounding rush of blood in her ears, and how the world spun really, really fast. The spectacular colors of her surroundings diminished and blurred in her vision as the ground beneath her feet became swirly. She smelled…

_Grandmother’s abdomen is torn open, gastric fluids mixed with infection and blood, and her scent is fading as death hovers closely … Kuromaru is happy, he has rolled in the mud just outside Konoha’s upper hot springs with Kakashi and both are playing keepaway with four fresh-baked dango from the impatient Aunt Natsumi, as Aunt Bashira looks on and laughs and laughs … Danzo smells of Tsume’s pheromones, of the cave and ash and brothel with patchouli and cinnamon, of regret (has never stopped smelling of regret – the scent is everywhere in all of his trails that crisscross the world, including a very faint, exceedingly old trail where salt and snow meet together in Wind)… That jerk Uchiha Madara whose scent lingers with her own in the_ _Nara_ _forest is sleeping beside a fire in the_ _Land_ _of_ _Mountains_ _… Hidarime scattered with several others – including an Aburame, and how the insects mourn! – tainted with fresh dirt and blast tags, ash mixed with blood mixed with fear and pain and Hidarime’s dear, beloved ninken, may they rest in pieces … Kushina’s trail of sun-warmed soil and fishcake from Grass to Lightning is like a blaze because of the trail of hair that still lines her path, but her path also lies through the Land of Whirlpools, to a wrecked Village where blood has split, even Sakumo’s, where ashes and ghosts and grief saturate the land with salt and alligators … Tsume’s blood, fresh. She is bleeding, just as traces of her blood still remain in the Nara forest hundreds of kilometers and six years away…_

Tsume grasped her hair with her hands, the fingertips from her right unable to do more but slide, while she gripped tight with her left. The familiar and (mostly) well-loved scents overwhelmed her with details– not just in current time, but of the past, as well as an untold multitude of other scents whose stories she had no preexisting knowledge of. She immediately tracked the trail she and Grandmother had taken four months ago from Konoha, all the way to Tetsuzanshi, and the trails of all who had crossed their paths, blazes of _life_ and _story_ that lit up the world. She tracked Grandmother’s trail from Tetsuzanshi down to the Land of Vegetables, and then the Land of Birds, and then the Land of Grass where her scent changed abruptly when caught in the same blast zone that killed Hidarime.

She tracked Danzo’s trail backwards, from Tetsuzanshi to Grass, to Konoha, to Wind, and the thirty-seven people he killed (and could smell, precisely, how twenty-one of those people died) between Wind and Tetsuzanshi. And she smelled Jiraiya’s trail across the continent, the many different toads he summoned, and the only two women (Oyubi and a kunoichi from Hoshi) whom he had sex with in the last eight months. Tsume was momentarily surprised – she expected many more women – and she used the surprise to push her brain from the familiar, to concentrate on the distant and barely-known. She concentrated on it, trying to remember all the different details that bombarded every thought and awareness.

Through the rush of blood in her ears, she heard a distant voice, smelled the anger in the coiling dark scent. “…back _down_ , Tsume!”

“I knooooow what’m _doing_.” She drew back some of the chakra from her nose anyway, dropping from far above one hundred percent, to fifty percent. She had gone way beyond the established one hundred percent – what was she _thinking_ when she shoved all that chakra into her nose? Oh, yeah, something about forgetting fearless bouts of stupidity? Danzo had only meant for her to take it to where the world began to spin and then drop it just under, and she had blasted far beyond that threshold, like it didn’t even exist on her scale. The world seemed so small, so distant now. She vaguely recalled feeling… senseless last time? Yes, without any sense of the world, long ago in the Nara forest, staring blindly into what might have been a green canopy of leaves after the spinning red eyes shredded and shredded. Nothing to see, smell, taste, touch, hear, or feel. A floating nothingness soaked in pain and overwhelming wonder.

Her eyes ached. She brushed the back of her hand against her eyes, and smeared the tracks of blood that dribbled down her face. “Oh.” She was distantly aware of how Danzo held her upright, one arm wrapped securely around her torso. She could feel that anchor her to the world. She focused on what she could. “Oh.” Colors swam and tilted, but not as bad as before just passing out from chakra exhaustion. “I messed up, didn’t I?” Her voice sounded very distant, as if it was bouncing back through a long tunnel.

Danzo settled Tsume’s limp body on the ground, and cradled her head with his large hands. “Do as I tell you. Roll your eyes. Good, good.” He dabbed the blood away from her cheeks. “Now cross them like you’re looking at your nose – yes, like that. Does any of that hurt?”

“Have a headache. ‘s not bad.” Her lips felt numb, like when the dentist had to give her shots, but she could still feel the insides of her mouth and tongue.

“Does anything seem blurry or dark?”

“Blurry, but it’s getting better.” She could see Jiraiya’s expression as he hovered worriedly over Danzo’s shoulder. Jiraiya smelled of fear, and Danzo smelled of fear and anger.

“Good. _Perhaps_ you’ve come out of this without even _more permanent damage_.” Oh gosh, she hadn’t thought about _that_. “Did you find the camp?”

“Yessh.” The problem was that the camp wasn’t the same as a month ago when she first got the information. She distantly supposed that it was a good idea that Danzo was making her get fresh Intel. And this was the price to pay, yes? To suffer for Konoha, so Kushina-chan didn’t have to. Except Kushina-chan couldn’t smell and track like Tsume could… Okay, she was suffering for Oyubi-chan. That would be okay, too. Oyubi had suffered enough these last few months, what with thinking that Tsume was dead, and now knowing that Hidarime-chan was also dead, and all Oyubi got out of her suffering was a very good orgasm from Jiraiya.

Danzo produced a canteen and a handkerchief from his pockets. As Danzo wet the handkerchief and cleaned her face, as she smelled Jiraiya hastily summon a toad, she spoke. Her tongue wasn’t feeling very cooperative.

“The camp ish shtill there in Wwwwwwwaterfall, and it’s got all the th-th-shupplies stocked up there, but most of the people aren’t therrrrre.” She weakly waved her right hand, which Danzo began scrubbing when she noticed that blood leaked from beneath her fingernails. “Whyy am I doing thiiiiissss?” she asked. Her head pounded like it was caught in a vice and someone was tightening it. “I didn’t hur’ my handth.” She thought a moment. Her thoughts felt like they were crawling through molasses. “At leasht not today.” 

“Back on track, child. So most of the forces aren’t stationed in the enemy camp?”

“Nnnoooo. Motht of fortheth left. Juzt a shhhhkeletal crew to run it, while everyone elshe ish zircling Grash into Rrrrrrain and towards F-F-Fire .” At least her body didn’t hurt like it used to – not compared to her head, and she was used to her head hurting. It had been over a year since her last terrible headache, though. That was a good thing, right? And her tongue wasn’t working. Grandmother always said Tsume was better off with a silencing seal slapped on it. She tried to imagine Orochimaru’s seal on her tongue instead of her toe, and then decided not to – she already knew what it felt like for men to bite her tongue. She stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry all over Danzo, and felt her mood perk up. So she did it again. “Thhhhthththth.” That was way more fun than s’s!

Danzo swiped his face and sighed. “Please stop spitting on me. How many forces are stationed where in what circles?”

Tsume forced the words through the numb lips and stubby tongue. Numbers, locations, sloppily-calculated distances, identifying factors of forces and geography, time; she described everything her nose told her as gentle hands cupped her head and cool chakra soothed away all the pain.

Somewhere between describing the three children that had followed the Three Sannin in Rain, the path of the Iwa nin who won her on Auction Night, and the red Uchiha eyes in the Nara forest that were now in Mountains, Tsume slipped into a comfortable void of nothingness.

oOoOoOo

Tsume awoke to laughing calls of, “No fair! Give it back!” She rolled over and nearly fell off the narrow hospital bed that she had been tucked in. Kushina was flopped belly-down on the examining table, her feet kicking in the air as she reached for a shougi game piece that Minato dangled just out of her reach. Osamu took advantage of Kushina’s distraction to snatch some pretzels out of a large bowl. It was Himewari who noticed Tsume awakening first. The ninken wagged her tail eagerly as she wriggled forward on the bed sheets, butting her head against Tsume’s left hand. At the thumping of the tail, Hotaru turned away from the game and grinned when she saw Tsume.

“Oh, finally!” Hotaru exclaimed, scooting across the room on Nirami’s wheeled stool. She slid to a stop beside Tsume. “I know that Inuzukas are so notorious with their reckless behaviors and a death wish that it probably qualifies as an obscure bloodline, but don’t you think you’re taking it a little far?” She didn’t wait for Tsume’s answer before twirling around on the stool. “Wheeeee!”

Tsume peered over the edge of the blanket that had been tightly tucked around her and scratched Himewari’s ears. Kushina finally snatched the piece away from Minato. “Good to see you’re awake. You looked dreadful when Danzo brought you back from outside, believe it!”

Tsume didn’t even bother searching her memory to figure out how her latest adventure must’ve ended. She’d be so glad when she got home – she spent more time dealing with injuries since leaving Konoha than in her entire life! “It’s a talent,” she said, trying to sound prim and noble, like a Hyuuga.

Minato grinned at her. “The talent is that you _survive_. Oof!”

Kushina withdrew her fist from Minato’s ribcage, and turned towards Tsume. “Want to play war?” she asked, holding the shougi piece out in an offering. “We couldn’t find the pack of cards, so Minato had the brilliant idea of using shougi pieces instead.” She tilted a glare towards him as he rubbed his ribs. “And I was winning too, until _someone_ started sneaking my pieces.”

Minato gave Kushina a pointed look. “Yes.” He tapped his breastbone. “Ninja’s the name, cheating’s the game.”

Tsume grinned and sat upright. Her body was stiff, but the only part of her that still throbbed in pain was her right hand. From the smell of it, she had Nirami to thank. “I wanna cheat – er, I mean, play!” Osamu and Hotaru helped Tsume sit on the wheeled stool so they could scoot her across the floor to the examining table. Himewari never left Tsume’s shadow, and settled down at her feet to keep them warm.

Minato explained how they dividing the shougi pieces face-down into an equal number between each person, and the pieces were used to advance on the linear, winding track that was split into multiple squares. In each square was a carefully penciled challenge or reward. Kushina had drawn the track with the use of a permanent marker on the back of the shougi board. It sounded like a brilliant idea to Tsume, since she was incapable of memorizing the strategies for playing shougi, and barely understood the different pieces. The function of the pieces meant nothing, in this game; their only purpose was to serve as an advancing marker for the player.

“We used to play this game all the time back in Uzu,” Kushina said, her eyes and odor heavy with grief.

Just as Minato finished explaining the rules of the game to Tsume, they were interrupted by Oyubi’s entrance. “Ah.” She smiled at them, her face bare of any mask. “I’m about to leave for a two day patrol and may not be back by the time you leave.” She crossed the room with graceful, quiet steps, and knelt beside Tsume. After a moment of hesitation, she gently slung an arm around Tsume’s shoulders and pulled her into a hug. Tsume buried her nose in the crook of Oyubi’s shoulder and smelled the clan of Oyubi’s sire, stronger now than it had been when Tsume left Konoha. Genetic scents only shifted dramatically in an Inuzuka when they awakened the bloodline limits of their sires, and Oyubi was a little older than normal for such to happen, but Tsume was glad for her. Oyubi’s eyes had definitely matured in the last two months.

“I’m going to say this now, even in front of these fine young friends of yours,” Oyubi flashed a smile at the other adolescents as she pulled back from Tsume, “because, should I die in this war and we don’t cross paths until we reach that great big kennel in the sky, I want you to go through life knowing the _truth_ : you are a fine alpha, and you will make a better, greater clan leader than your sister could’ve.”

Oyubi pressed a finger against Tsume’s lips to stop her immediate protest. “Hear me out. I knew you would be greater when I saw you surrounded by weapons, and you stared down the captain while protecting a newborn male baby. Protecting those whom you perceive weaker has always been a part of you, even before the brain injury. This recklessness comes with the brain injury, yes – but then again, you never hesitated to stand up for others before the injury.” Oyubi smoothed Tsume’s hair back, her dark eyes soft and reflective in the lamp light. “From what I remember, your mother never hesitated either – you’ve both gone forward, doing your best to do what’s right by your pack. She’d be so proud of you.”

Tears pricked at Tsume’s eyes.

“That’s the purpose of the alpha, from the very beginnings of our clan – to protect the pack. But somewhere along the way, we lost the meaning of _pack_ , replacing it with _clan_. I know you can restore that willfulness to protect the weak that Grandmother Shinzou has scorned, which is something Hidarime didn’t have the courage to do.”

Tsume blinked rapidly as her vision blurred. Oyubi pulled Tsume into a hug again. “I love you,” she whispered, before she and Himewari departed.

Tsume’s companions were silent for a moment as she blew her nose into her sleeve. Tsume rubbed her ankles together. “Gosh… That’s the nicest thing anyone in my clan has ever said to me.”

Minato was the last of those present to turn from Tsume to the board game. His gaze was almost as heavy as his introspective consideration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Jiraiya totally writes fanfiction for legends and lore. We all have to get our start somewhere, right?
> 
> Also, this is what happens to Tsume when she blows past her limits, because of how Madara messed with her brain, and why she was in such a bad condition in the Nara Forest:  
>  __  
> “Of course she did!” Tsunade’s hand tightened around Tsume’s head, but she eased off the pressure when Tsume stirred with a sharp cry. “She doesn’t have the short-term memory to process and ‘keep things in mind’, you idiot! And why the hell are you doing any teaching with an Inuzuka in the first place? When an Inuzuka increases chakra in their nose to increase their sensitivity, the chakra in the processing centers of the brain dedicated to the interpretation of scent data also increases. Tsume’s brain tissue is so sensitive and her threshold is so low that when she increases chakra like that, her internal pressure elevates significantly and causes miniature blood vessels to burst. When her brain hemorrhages, her liver malfunctions and causes pathological activation of her clotting factors. Her body throws out inappropriately-placed clots, blocking blood flow to other organs and hastening their failure, while being unable to prevent bleeding from other areas – like her eyes, nose, ears, and throat, where the majority of blood vessels have burst from the internal pressure.” Tsunade fell silent as the glow in her hands increased. “Disseminated intravascular coagulation was what nearly killed her the last time. By the Sage – she looks almost exactly the same now as when her grandmother brought her to me from the Nara forest. At least this time, I know what to do, what to look for, and how to fix the problems, so there shouldn’t be any more brain damage.”
> 
> Tsume was originally meant to pull this stunt with Danzo and Tsunade, instead of Danzo and Jiraiya, but I was never able to figure out how to get Tsunade into this scene, so I cut it from the story. Disseminated intravascular coagulation has a 40% mortality rate.


	16. Alpha Years - Chapter Thirteen

They stayed at the relief station only long enough for Danzo and Tsume to heal a little more, and restock diminished supplies. Jiraiya and his team, Danzo, Kushina, and Tsume left by mid-afternoon the next day. With her body mostly not aching and a pair of sturdy sandals on her feet, Tsume was pleased that she didn’t have to be a dead weight carried by someone else in the party. She was also dressed in a black shirt and black fatigues – an old uniform of Oyubi’s, which had been hemmed with a pair of scissors and some strategically placed string through the belt loops to make it fit _somewhat_ decently (it was painfully obvious that her chest didn’t fill out the shirt like Oyubi’s had. But someday, Tsume promised herself with a dejected little poke at her flat boobs that didn’t require a bra or even wraps for support, someday it would…).

They still traveled fairly slow, mostly due to Tsume being as out-of-shape as Danzo had said – although Tsume suspected that she was also paying the price for her forgetfulness and smashing through and beyond her limitations earlier – and took frequent rests. Tsume was secretly grateful that Minato’s teammates moved almost as slow as she did, and required almost as many rests. Which probably meant that Minato and Kushina were freaks of nature with their stamina. They managed to avoid most of the patrolling enemies, except for one group that caught their trail and followed after with a greater speed than their group could travel. Jiraiya and Minato dropped back to deal with them, while Danzo and the genin continued onward.

Patrolling enemies became sparser as patrolling allies and Konoha nin became more frequent. The Konoha nin moved in large clusters, regrouping further north to meet the oncoming forces that Tsume had sniffed out and detailed to Danzo and Jiraiya. Danzo still had Tsume track paths around their allies, although twice he had to identify their party when it couldn’t be avoided. It seemed that most of the Konoha nin would much rather have avoided Danzo, judging by their shifting scents and uncomfortable facial expressions. By the time they reached Orochimaru’s camp, it was the fourth morning after their departure from the relief station.

Orochimaru’s camp was much larger than the last time Tsume had come through. Most of the troops had been in Suna and Ame four months ago, and the camp was now too large to be contained underground. Large tents stood in the very center of the camp, surrounded by underground pits. Green ribbons hanging from the pole crests fluttered in the wind.

“I have to report to Orochimaru-san,” Danzo told Jiraiya as they entered the camp’s parameters.

Jiraiya nodded. “I’ll go with you. This was as much my mission as it is his.”

Danzo shook his head. “No. He’s still your teammate and you still need him covering your back. I’ll shoulder the repercussions and fallout.”

“What about me?” Tsume asked, waving her hand in the air. Danzo didn’t even look at her. He barely looked at her ever since they left the relief station, and had only spoken to her to give orders on setting up camp or avoiding patrols. His lack of attention still stung. Tsume spent most of the trip wondering just how to apologize to him for ignoring the limits he had set with her maximum olfaction. As Danzo started to walk away without saying anything, Tsume snagged the back of his shirt with her left hand. “What about me?” she asked again as he froze. She forced herself not to hunch her shoulders as he twisted his torso to glare down at her.

“Your input is not necessary. I can report your capture and rescue without you.”

Uh… Yeah, so maybe going with Danzo to Orochimaru made her official story kind of suspicious. Which reminded her that Orochimaru really was going to be pissed off with Danzo removing her from the brothel. “Okay,” she said, letting her hand fall away from his shirt.

Jiraiya nudged her shoulder. “Why don’t you head over to the infirmary tents and see if your grandmother is still alive?”

Tsume supposed she should, since she was now the clan head’s heir. Unless Grandmother went with an ancient clan tradition, generations old even before the founding of Konoha, where two alphas would battle to the death for the title of clan leader. She could _totally_ take on the other alpha, even with her dominant arm in a cast – Kashin was probably just seven years old, so all Tsume would need to do was sit on her younger cousin until Kashin grew bored and hungry.

Tsume sniffed the air, and then hunched her shoulders. “She’s alive.” Barely though; probably the only thing that kept Grandmother alive at the moment was her spite against death itself. “But I’d rather go see Sakumo-sensei.”

“Grandmother first; I’ll find Sakumo for you. Look, kid.” Jiraiya crouched down beside Tsume and tilted her chin so she could see his face. “I told you once before, although you probably don’t remember it, but your great-grandmother is a black hole of negativity, a naysayer who would never see you being successful even when you are. You’ve spent most of your life trying to please her, and until you settle something inside, here,” he touched Tsume’s sternum, fingertips resting where her heart fluttered against her ribcage, “you’re going to spend the rest _of_ your life trying to please this idea of Grandmother even after she’s dead and her body long gone. Don’t let your best years waste away like that, so go get that closure before it’s too late.”

Tsume thought of all the things she could’ve said or did with Hidarime. She wished that she had written a goodbye letter to her sister like she had written them to Kushina and Kokoro, so Hidarime could’ve at least died knowing how much she meant to Tsume. Then Tsume thought of Grandmother’s parting words on that distant hillside. “Do you think…” She dropped her eyes to the ground; the prairie grasses had been tramped flat by the passage of thousands of shinobi. It looked like it wouldn’t ever grow back, but she could smell the life just waiting to flourish when the trampling had deceased. She glanced shyly at Minato, Kushina, Hotaru, and Osamu, who all stood waiting and watching patiently. She made sure her voice was too soft for them to hear, unless they heightened their hearing with chakra. “Do _you_ think I’m weak, pitiful, and useless?”

Jiraiya waited until she raised her eyes to him again. His smile was faint as he gently shook his head. “See, Tsume, this is what I’m talking about. These are your grandmother’s words, aren’t they?”

She dug a toe in the ground and nodded stiffly.

“You’re always going to be haunted by those words, unless you tell your grandmother the honest truth of yourself. You have to recognize and _feel_ the truth, and tell it to Inuzuka Shinzou while she’s still around to hear it, otherwise her words will _always_ drown out your own. Her bitterness will cling to you like a shadow, and you’ll never be free of it. And no, I don’t think anything like that.” He bumped his forehead against hers. “I remember you in that bed, when Tsunade-hime would come around to work on healing you. And look how far you’ve come! You _had_ to be strong and stubborn to make the recovery that you’ve had. Tsunade’s healing would’ve meant nothing if you hadn’t stepped up to the plate. You are strong, compassionate, and absolutely remarkable. I am so very lucky to know you.”

Grandmother _was_ the void, Tsume realized. As long as Grandmother was always there, in spirit if nothing else, then Tsume was always going to be sucked into the darkness of worthlessness.

Tsume had enough of voids. She straightened. “You’re right. I’ll do it. I’ll go and speak with her, and give her a good piece of my mind.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” Tsume shook her head. Her gaze traveled over to the rest of her companions. “I have to do this on my own.” Minato gave her an understanding smile, and Kushina raised a fist in support. “I’ll go do it now, before I forget.”

“I doubt you’d forget something like this. However, knowing how easily distracted you are, I’ll hold you to it.” Jiraiya ruffled her hair as he stood up. “The rest of us are going to hit the mess hall. If I cross paths with Sakumo, I’ll tell him about you.”

“Thank you.” Steeling her resolve, Tsume parted with them and made her own unerring path through camp. She weaved through different shinobi, most of them unmasked and not all of them Konoha nin, and around tents. She finally found herself at a tent that was short in height but long and wide. A few guards and one med nin stood beside the entrance. Their discussion went silent at her approach. The smell of death, pain, and infection was almost overpowering, worse than any hospital she had ever been to. Tsume pulled back her sensitivity down to the zero of her baseline; in comparison to that moment under the maple tree with Danzo, it felt like she could barely smell anything at all.

“If you’re not wounded, no admittance,” said the med nin, a tall, bald man with nut-brown skin and eyes so dark that they were nearly black. He stopped Tsume before she could duck in. "And no, that hand in a cast won't work because it appears to have already been treated."

“I’m here to see my great-grandmother, Inuzuka Shinzou.”

The med nin eyed Tsume suspiciously as the guards chuckled with dark humor. “Now I _know_ something is wrong – no one wants to see that _bitch_. You either have a death wish, or you wanna finish her off. Frankly, I only care about the former. Besides, you lack the Inuzuka markings. And where’s your forehead protector? What’s your name?” The two guards crossed their arms and looked down at her with stern expressions. Passersby sent them curious looks as they circled around the tents to their own destinations.

Tsume touched her unmarked cheeks reflectively. She could feel her resolve seeping away. She knew that if she couldn’t get through the tent, she’d never try to see Grandmother again. She felt the void loom behind, dark and empty and cold. She almost looked over her shoulder. “I… Grandmother wouldn’t let me stay long enough to get my forehead protector. Look, I’m Hidarime’s younger sister, Tsume. I know my sister was killed two weeks ago in that blast zone, and I never got a chance to say goodbye. Can’t I do that with my grandmother?”

One of the guards spoke. “Do you have any papers or identification? We can’t let anyone wander into the tents with the wounded. You could be an enemy kunoichi for all we know, who somehow managed to sneak into the heart of the camp… Yeah, that’s a bit of a stretch, I suppose,” he added when the other guard nudged him in the ribcage, “but we can’t give you admittance,” his voice dropped into a grumble, “no matter how much of a blessing it would be if you succeeded.”

“Hold.” The entrance flap was lifted, and a lean figure bent under it before straightening in the sunshine. “Tsume?” Up close, Nara Shikake smelled of himself and his clan’s pungent herbal and deer-antler medicine. He wore a medic apron that used to be a pristine white, but was stained now with various body fluids and ointments. His gray-streaked dark hair, every bit as unruly as her own, was bound in a ponytail on the top of his head, and he was taller than the guards and the med nin. “I was told you were _dead_.”

Tsume stared unabashed, breathing in his scent that reminded her of early autumn wheat mingled with a sharp bite of frost. His expression was characteristically flat and his eyes carefully guarded, but she enjoyed his scents of relief, surprise, and hope. “Yeah, that’s what Danzo and Kushina-chan and everyone else said.”

“Danzo?” one of the guards echoed, his eyes going wide. “Shimura Danzo?”

Tsume glanced over. “Yeah. He’s the one who rescued me from the Iwa nin that I guess Grandmother thought killed me.” The guard looked very uncomfortable with the idea of any involvement concerning Danzo. She added, with just a hint of mischievousness and a finger pointed towards Danzo’s direction, “I can go get him so he can vouch for me.”

The guard cringed. “No, no, that’s quite all right. I’m sure he’s busy doing something else. We mustn’t disturb him.”

She turned back to Shikake. “I need to speak to Grandmother. It’s very important.”

Her sire was silent for a moment as he considered her, tracing his lips with one of his medicinal-stained fingers, but Tsume was used to seeing Shikake silently considering her from a distance with shrewd, regretful eyes. Tsume and Shikake crossed paths occasionally when his son, Shikaku, was in the upper year Academy classes and was inevitably dragged into Tsume’s schoolyard brawls – and she would never, ever admit that she had deliberately timed some of those brawls, even though no one would believe that Simpleton Tsume could be so clever.

Shikake always seemed approachable despite being quiet, and she always wanted to speak to him in private, but Grandmother had put the fear of doing so into Tsume long before she lost the ability to feel fear. It hadn’t been enough to stop her from approaching the Nara Forest to see if she could talk to him in private, and boy howdy did that end badly for her.

“You’re aware then that she’s dying.”

“Yeah. Jiraiya-sensei said I needed to talk to her before she died.”

“And I suppose your words need to be said in private.”

Confronting Grandmother about the brothel where everyone could hear it definitely wasn’t a good thing, but Tsume didn’t know how else she could say what needed to be said without revealing the Black Ops. “Privacy is _very_ important.”

“Come, then. I’ll set up a barrier around her bed so that you’re not overheard.” He glanced at the guards and other med nin. “Oh, yes. Just take my word that this is Inuzuka Tsume.”

One of the guards lifted his hands, placating. “Hey, man, I ain’t getting between a Nara and his kid. That would be almost as bad as getting between an Inuzuka and her dog. Or getting noticed by the Captain …”

Shikake didn’t say anything or even acknowledge the remark of paternity – Tsume’s eyes and spiky hair was identical to his own, so there was no point – as he swept the tent flap back and waved Tsume though. She followed him down the aisle, past the rows and rows of sometimes empty, sometimes occupied cots and through the moans, cries, and occasional static scents.

In the distant corner of the tent, with three ninken on the cot and one beneath it, Tsume saw Grandmother curled up with her sheets shoved to the side. She looked small and brittle, a shriveled up shadow of her former self. The ninken were sleek, long-bodies hounds and still gigantic in size – their shoulders easily reached Tsume’s waist, and only because she had gone through a growth spurt in the brothel. Engulfed beside the ninken, Grandmother seemed child-sized and vulnerable.

Grandmother’s hair was undone, a cascade of tangled silver spikes that was almost as wild as Tsume’s hair. Aunt Natsumi once told Tsume that she was nearly the spitting image of Grandmother, back when Grandmother had been a young girl, except that Grandmother’s hair was as red as Kushina’s. Tsume sometimes wondered if the physical resemblance didn’t also mean she might become more like Grandmother in word and action too, and she desperately hoped not.

Grandmother’s nostrils flared and her eyes cracked open as Tsume’s approach. Tsume saw Grandmother’s hand curl into a white-knuckled fist. One of the ninken – Ni – considered Tsume without a sound, even as the fur across Ni’s shoulder stood on end. San and Shi ignored her. From beneath the cot, Ichi growled a warning.

“Someone wants a private word with you,” Shikake said as he tugged some paper screens around the bed for makeshift privacy.

Grandmother’s air rattled and wheezed as she took a deep breath. “Send this worthless rat away.” Her voice was rough and her mouth was dry. “I _had_ no intention of ever seeing her again.”

Tsume felt her resentment flare. “I’m not going anywhere, Grandmother.” When Ichi growled again, Tsume crouched down and snarled. “Back off!” Ichi retreated away as the growl pitched into a whine.

Shikake’s fingers flashed through several seals. Tsume felt a pressure build up momentarily around her ears before it puffed out. “There, that will keep things private for you.” He ignored Grandmother as he rested a light hand on Tsume’s shoulder. “Come see me when you’re done, all right?”

Tsume looked at him wide-eyed. That was the first offer of any sort she could remember him extending to her. “Really?”

Grandmother laughed. The laughter turned into painful, hacking coughs, and she curled her arms around her middle to brace her abdomen as more fluid spilled out of it, saturating the soaked bandages even further. “The barren wench still desperate enough to eagerly accept her cheating husband’s bastards?” Her hospital robe was stained with gastric fluid, pus, and blood.

Shikake tilted a bored gaze down on Shinzou, looking completely unbothered by her insults. “The Nara clan’s claim came before your own, and we have _always_ welcomed the unwanted Inuzuka children. Our forest opened its gates to her, and Tsume spilled her blood within its boundaries. Blood always calls to blood, no matter which side of the sheets you’re born on. Besides,” something gleamed in his eyes, “the Inuzuka clan has no place to be naming _anyone_ illegitimate bastards.”

Grandmother sneered and her voice dropped into a broken hiss. “Do not talk to me about how the forest willingly opened its gates to Tsume, not when the stink of Uchiha Madara was everywhere.”

Shikake’s expression didn’t change. “Come to me afterwards,” he told Tsume again, just before he left.

Grandmother, still bracing her abdomen, rolled over on her side to steadfastly ignore Tsume. Tsume studied the ridges of Grandmother’s spine through the thin white hospital gown. Her thoughts whirled with more than just resentment, as she distantly remembered iron-wrought gates, suspended between two trees, silently swinging open at her curious touch. “I survived, Grandmother,” Tsume began, carefully reciting what she had practiced in her mind while she was walking to the tent. “I know you didn’t think I had it in me, because you said the mission was either going to make me or break me, but here I am.”

Her great-grandmother remained silent, making no movement to indicate that she even heard Tsume’s soft voice.

Tsume looked at her right hand. The cast was muddy and stained with grass. Her knuckles were itching again, and so did the exposed fingertips. She made sure to raise the volume of her voice. “I wasn’t broken, like you expected me to be.” She walked around the cot to face Grandmother again. “It hurt every night, and I think it would’ve broken me if I could feel fear, but I’m still in one piece.” Grandmother had her face tucked against the crook of her elbow, eyes squeezed shut in pain. “Hey. I’m talking to you, Grandmother.” 

Grandmother cracked one eye open long enough to glare at Tsume. Her eye was bloodshot. “Go ahead and blabber like you always do. I’m too weak to shut you up this time.”

Tsume had a lot of things she wanted to say, but now she couldn’t remember any of them. She had expected Grandmother to lash out, verbally if not physically, but the stony silence was entirely unlike the stern, loud woman who had raised her. “I’m alive,” was all that she could think to say, trying hard not to let the frustration and resentment overwhelm her thoughts.

“More’s the pity.” Grandmother buried her face back into the crook of her elbow. “I’ve seen six generations of Inuzuka women come and go. I remember standing beneath that blank stone cliff, in the forest clearing where the Village now exists. I saw the First Hokage’s walls of Konoha, half a year after the birth of my third daughter. After ninety years, I’m so tired of living… I’ve outlived my chosen heirs – I’ve buried my mother, grandmother, aunts and sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters. All those whom I’ve placed my hopes and my dreams are dead. Why…” Tsume smelled Grandmother’s grief and tears. “Why does the _wrong_ great-granddaughter live?”

Tsume choked on her breath. She tugged at the hem of Oyubi’s borrowed shirt and tried to think as Grandmother’s words punched her in the heart, worse than even Danzo’s refusal when she felt poised on the edge of the void. “What’s so _wrong_ about me? I survived! I survived that horrible place and all those men and I got loads of Intel on forces and their locations so we can win the war, but it’s still not enough for you! You said that I was never unloved! You said you were giving me a purpose, to, to, I don’t know, to survive! Why would you do that if I was the wrong great-granddaughter?” 

She vividly remembered the blood on the sheets, on her thighs, on the long hook and forceps that Madame Kai had used. She thought of those long, horrible nights and the men – the endless parade of men driven into a seal-induced frenzy like a swarm of sharks hunting a single drop of blood. What did she have to do to finally get _something_ from Grandmother? “And then Danzo got me and we left, and I wasn’t a worthless meat shield, I wasn’t! _I_ found Kushina-chan two hundred kilometers away with the Kumo nin when everyone else couldn’t find her, and I fought a Kumo nin and ripped his spine out with my bare hand!” Okay, so Minato had also found Kushina, but he didn’t count because he had a trail of hair to follow and the knowledge that Kushina had been abducted, and all Tsume had was a distant scent at least three or four countries away.

Grandmother curled into a tighter ball. Her bony shoulders shook with muffled cries.

Tsume paced beside the bed for a few moments, tugging and wringing and pulling on the hem of Oyubi’s shirt; Oyubi’s clinging scent was comforting, even though she wasn’t anywhere near by. “You aren’t even listening. You _never_ listen to me, Grandmother. I guess… I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?” she asked, pausing beside San, who whined and rested her head on the curve of Grandmother’s hip. “I could single-handedly win this war, and it wouldn’t matter to you, because I’m not my mom, and I’m not Hidarime. I’m just… me.” Just Simpleton Tsume, who went through life with a broken brain and an empty void. She stared at the solid ground as resentment simmered and bubbled in her chest. “It’s _your_ own fault, you know, Grandmother. If you’d done a better job, then—” Tsume’s words turned into a shrill scream as pain bloomed down her left arm. She leaped beyond Grandmother’s next slicing attack, claws extended and glinting with chakra. Blood gushed down the three deep lacerations that flayed open Tsume’s left arm from shoulder to elbow.

“Shut up!” Grandmother shrieked, pushing herself upright with one arm while the other was still extended forward. “I should’ve finished what Madara started! I should’ve _drowned_ you at birth. I told Tsubaki that another pregnancy would kill her, but then she had to get knocked up on a mission and then had the audacity to die before she put the damn contract in place! You were your mother’s biggest mistake, from the moment of conception to now! You can’t lead, you can’t think, and you disdain our clan ways, with the way you dote upon that _boy_ – Oyubi will inherit the clan before you do.” She slowly curled all her fingers into a fist, and then extended and pointed the bloody index finger at Tsume. “I _told_ myself that even an Uchiha would lead our clan before it ever falls into your incompetent hands, and I mean it! Even the Uchiha, even _Madara_ , is more tolerable than _you!_ ”

Tsume hunched at Grandmother’s words. Blood stained her cast where she tried to press her right hand against the gashes to staunch the blood. It dripped onto the floor. Her eyes stung, but she wasn’t going to cry – she just _wasn’t._ “You didn’t even want me before I overdid it in the Nara forest?” It hurt, because she remembered how kind and loving Grandmother was before it all changed. Before the man who hurt Tsume, the man whom Grandmother evidently hated less than her great-granddaughter, had changed it all.

Grandmother collapsed on the bed as her strength gave out, but her rage still burned like an inferno. “ _Never._ Worthless, useless, _and_ weak.”

“I am not! Danzo and Jiraiya and Kushina don’t think I’m worthless!” If someone like Danzo could be surprised by her nose, then it meant something. It just had to. “And I’m not useless, and I’m not weak, like you!”

Tsume kicked at the cot with a chakra-powered foot, just like when she had punched at the Kumo nin with extended claws. The force of her foot smashed the cot and sent wooden shards flying through the privacy screens. Grandmother would’ve gone flying too, if not for colliding with Ichi. She screamed in pain, slumping against the ground. The ninken immediately surrounded Grandmother in protective stances, their haunches bristling and teeth bared.

Tsume felt a flash of vindictive pleasure at the sight of her great-grandmother, vulnerable and weak and crumpled on the ground, finally – _finally_ – at Tsume’s mercy.

Then Tsume’s hands began to shake as she thought of Mooncalf, with his stupid fluffy dandelion hair and heartwarming smile, carrying her for three days because she was too weak to run, and how he had promised that he would never drop her.

Tsume had a sudden, horrible feeling that she was Grandmother looking at herself, lying on the broken remains of a cot, her head cracked open like a melon as cerebral fluid and blood leaked onto the forest floor. The privacy walls seemed to close in around her, the space shrinking until she was entombed in the darkness and trapped in the void with Grandmother.

She rushed away from the area, knocking over one of the paper screens with a resounding crash. Shikake was leaning against a nearby pole, and he looked up, startled at the racket. His body was stiff and anger marred his face when he saw Tsume’s arm. Tsume caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye, and turned her head. A mirror that was suspended on wire hung over the washbin across the tent. Tsume hurried over to it, and stared at her reflection for a moment. She raised her bloody left hand and very deliberately outlined her eyes in the crooked crimson lines, and then painted sloppy crimson triangles on her face – the color of the alpha.

Tsume looked like the monster that she was, but at least she was an Inuzuka alpha bitch monster. Grandmother could never take that away from her. She was strong in spirit, and Grandmother… Grandmother had always been weak and petty in spirit. She wouldn’t be like Inuzuka Shinzou, deliberately torturing the weak and vulnerable.

Tsume rushed back to Grandmother, brushing wordlessly past Shikake and smearing blood against his apron. She snarled at Grandmother’s ninken again as they growled, and they whimpered and flinched away from her. She planted herself in front of Grandmother with a wide stance, careful to keep out of reach. She wasn’t scared of them, and they knew it. Grandmother raised her eyes to meet Tsume’s.

“I’m a survivor,” Tsume declared, her voice stern. “I _will_ outlive you and your horrible memories. I will be a better fighter, a better tracker, a better _mother_ and _grandmother_ … and a better _clan head_.” She raised her chin stubbornly, trying to ignore its trembling and the cloying stickiness of blood that coated her eyelids and cheeks. “Oyubi will be my Second, so you’ll still get what you want, as far as Uchiha leadership. But she already acknowledged _me_ the heir when we met up two days ago. So there, Grandmother.” She crouched down like a predator readying itself to pounce, and stared without flinching into Grandmother’s blazing eyes. “And just so you know –so you can just _stuff_ it in that shallow, unmarked grave you wanted to dump _me_ in – the Inuzuka clan is never going to abandon _any_ of its children so long as I live, and _that_ includes _our sons_.”

She stormed away as Grandmother shrieked wordlessly in anger, glad that she had gotten in the last word, even if it wasn’t what she had wanted to say. None of it was. She had hoped for a confrontation that would’ve made Grandmother realize that Tsume was every bit as special and as wanted as Hidarime had been, but that moment was just a fleeting dream that soothed her mind when the brothel was alit with dawn and Madame Kai’s cool green chakra was erasing the damage from the last customer. As she stepped past the boundary of the privacy screens, even the one still knocked on the ground, the genjutsu that Shikake had raised muffled Grandmother’s voice into silence. Tsume’s body trembled from the confrontation, and she felt a vice-like pressure building in her head.

“Tsume?” Shikake waved her close, and then looked startled as she threw her arms – one bound up in a cast, the other soaked with blood – around his middle and buried her face against his sternum as she finally let the tears come.

She had the last word with Grandmother, but why did she feel like she had lost?

oOoOoOo

Shikake let Tsume cry into his shirt as he carefully crabwalked her past the occupied beds to a cordoned-off partition where several stocked cabinets and a rickety examining table were present. He swung her up on the examining table and pulled the curtains around. “Take off your shirt,” he said as he went to one of the cabinets.

Tsume blew her nose into the hem of Oyubi’s shirt. “I k-kicked Grandmother’s cot and busted it. She needs help.”

Shikake gave her a considering look over his shoulder, and then shrugged. “Have your shirt off by the time I get back.” Tsume tried to obey while he was gone, but her left arm hurt too much to move easily, and her right arm got stuck when her cast caught on the sleeve. She was still crying and also sulking with her two arms tangled in the sleeves, feeling like a cumbersome ugly slug surrounded by graceful butterflies, when Shikake returned.

He did not return alone.

Sakumo has his arms around Tsume in a tight hug before she realized she could smell him through her tear-swollen sinuses, and he was crying tears of gratitude as he planted dry kisses in her hair.

“Oh, gosh.” Tsume couldn’t stop her bittersweet tears as she leaned into Sakumo’s hug, trying to wiggle her arms free so she could hug him back. The scent of his grief was overwhelmed by the scent of his joy. She felt a pressing weight fall off her shoulders to see Sakumo alive and well, even though her nose had been telling her that before she and her companions arrived at the camp. Smelling his life wasn’t enough – she had needed him to know about her being alive.

“Don’t make me pry you two apart,” Shikake warned as he went back to the supply cabinet. “You may need to cut Tsume out of her shirt.”

“But it’s Oyubi’s shirt!” Tsume didn’t want to ruin Oyubi’s shirt anymore than Grandmother already had.

Sakumo pulled back from Tsume. His vest was smeared with her blood and his eyes were red-rimmed, but his smile light up his face like a miniature sun. He cupped her chin. “And even in the midst of the ambushes and death, there are miracles,” he whispered. He tugged at her shirt as a frown wrinkled her brow. “How did you manage _this_?”

Tsume laughed through her tears. “It’s a talent,” she said, remembering what Minato and Hotaru had said when she awoke previously at the Whirlpool relief station.

“At least you’re back in mostly one piece.” Sakumo studied her shirt for a moment, and then carefully worked her left arm free. That slackened the shirt enough so he could slip it off her head and right arm. His gaze was sharp but respectful as he studied her bare torso, taking in the injuries and smattered old bruises. He tucked a towel under her chin to preserve some modesty as Shikake set his gathered supplies down on the examining table beside her.

“I listened in on your conversation with Shinzou,” Shikake said without preamble. “And while I have many questions I will be getting answers for, I want you to know the truth. She lied. You were once the most wanted baby in all of Konoha. Nearly started a civil war in fact.” He gave Sakumo a metal bowl. “Go get me some water from the barrel beside the washbin,” he said. Sakumo immediately obeyed. Shikake raised Tsume’s left arm and studied the bleeding lacerations. “I always knew she never told you how you wound up in her care and clan.”

Tsume swung her dangling feet and looked at her toes. They were crusted with dirt. The examining table squeaked and swayed with her movement, so she went still. “It’s because I was female.”

“No, _my_ clan would welcome Inuzuka girls as readily as we have historically welcomed the boys.” Shikake’s eyes were tender as he hooked a stay lock of Tsume’s wild hair behind her ear. She felt her heart hammering with a mixture of elation and suspicion. “For two months – two glorious, beautiful months, you truly were all mine.”

Tsume jumped when Sakumo entered the partition. He set the bowl of water beside Tsume, opposite of Shikake’s supplies. Shikake nodded his thanks, and then gestured for Sakumo to take a seat. He slid on a pair of recently-cleaned rubber gloves. “You may as well hear this, since you’re her sensei.”

Sakumo turned his kind eyes to Tsume. “I’ll stay only if you want me to.”

“Oh, please do!” Sakumo was one of her most precious persons, and the worry for him that existed ever since she heard of the blast that led to Kushina’s capture eased up like an unraveling knot within her heart. It seemed nothing had gone right since she was sold to the brothel, and Tsume needed that familiar reliability Sakumo always seemed to give, especially if it felt like her sire was going to be yanking the rug from beneath her feet (or heart, as the case may be).

Shikake cleaned her arm with gentle pats with his wet cloth. His speech was stilted and slow. “I married the civilian wife my clan arranged for me nearly twenty years ago. We easily became friends and we’re actually fond of each other – life would be hell if it was anything less – but there’s no _passion_ between us. Seventeen years ago, it was discovered that my wife, Hikaru, was barren and couldn’t have children.”

Tsume remembered Grandmother’s cruel words. Her eyed widened. “Oh.”

Shikake shrugged. “In a clan-arranged marriage, children are expected. But as I said, we’re fond of each other, and marriage planning and ceremonies are such a bother, so we talked about adopting some orphans. That’s not the easiest thing to do in most clans because of bloodline limits and clan secret techniques, but not impossible for ours. Fifteen years ago, your mother, Tsubaki, approached me.”

Tsume knew what “approached” meant. Inuzuka women usually took lovers, but occasionally they scoped out what the clan considered good genetic stock. The Inuzuka had special seals and techniques that increased fertility and chances of impregnation that they used to plan pregnancies and to breed ninken. As part of their treaty with Konoha, her clan had special paternity contracts that revoked all paternal rights of female offspring, which the Inuzuka clan claimed full and complete custody, regardless of clan, and that all male offspring would be given to the sire’s family without any expectation of custody or contact from the mother. (Or given to an orphanage, if the sire was dead, a civilian who refused custody, or a foreign shinobi.) The trick was getting the Konoha men to sign the contracts before impregnation, or at least before the pregnancy was obvious. Sometimes, arrangements were made ahead of time if the Inuzuka felt the man was of sound stock.

“I spoke with Hikaru regarding your mother’s offer. Hikaru considered it a chance to obtain a son through a surrogate, so I agreed to the offer and signed the contract.” Shikake finished cleaning Tsume’s arm and then smeared it with a thick paste that made her eyes and nose sting from its pungent odor. She felt her arm become cold and numb. “I’m going to save my chakra and stitch you up, since I doubt Sakumo’s going to let you go anywhere near a battle zone.”

Tsume glanced at Sakumo. “Absolutely not!” Sakumo declared cheerfully, even though his odor burned with a strange mixture of anger and curiosity.

“Despite a difficult pregnancy, Tsubaki gave birth to a healthy boy.”

“Shikaku,” Tsume supplied, wanting to show Shikake that she was paying attention.

“Much to your mother’s disappointment, and… Well, I realized I had miscalculated in thinking that our relationship would be strictly professional.” He hesitated a moment; Tsume could see him touching her arm, but she couldn’t feel it. “I’m afraid that in the time we spent together, we fell in love. Tsubaki was truly a remarkable woman, and I realized just how empty a passionless life was with Hikaru.” He sighed. “Such a bother. But I hadn’t set Hikaru aside for her infertility, and I had no intention of embarrassing her by taking on a mistress, no matter my personal desire.” Tsume felt her flesh tug as he began stitching, but it was a distant, detached sensation. “I did my best to maintain distance between your mother and me, but we were assigned a dangerous mission together a little more than a year after Shikaku’s birth. She was very breathtaking as she destroyed our enemies, and we were both lucky to survive. I hadn’t been able to lay aside that love I had for her, and so we… celebrated.”

“You had sex.”

He eyed her for such blunt speech, and Tsume shrugged, unapologetic. “Yes. That. When trying to get pregnant with Shikaku, Tsubaki used fertility seals and techniques. I thought nothing of the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy, but I guess even Inuzuka women can have an oopsie. She was unable to draw up another contract with me since I was sent on a long-term mission to a newly-created hospital in the Land of Vegetables shortly after our return. I knew about the pregnancy though, because Hikaru kept me appraised – despite my infidelity, Hikaru knew that she could potentially get another son as a result. She felt it was a small price to pay for the embarrassment of my dishonor.”

Not getting a signed contract was a gigantic Inuzuka clan faux pas though; Inuzuka women sometimes had abortions rather than risk the chance of having a daughter without a contract in place if the sire was a Konoha shinobi, although the warning of doing such usually pressed the shinobi into signing the contract. It was practically a requirement Grandmother made after the _blunder_ that resulted in Oyubi. She bet Grandmother was just livid. Tsume’s eyes flickered to Sakumo; his expression was distant, as if remembering Hidarime-chan. She was fiercely glad that Kakashi was male – she never would’ve known and gotten close to Sakumo if Grandmother’s decision to make Tsume responsible for the White Fang’s son hadn’t happened, and then she never would’ve met Danzo, who probably wouldn’t have removed her from the brothel.

Gosh, it was overwhelming how one thing could cause a cascade of events.

“Tsubaki had what was called placenta abruptia when she was seven months pregnant, a week before I was due to return home and sign the contract that she wanted, and she hemorrhaged to death. You survived though, even though you were only thirty weeks along. Shinzou was away at the time – the Land of Bears – which I took full advantage of when we learned that you were not a boy. You were so fragile, so little…”

Shikake’s hands paused as he considered her with undisguised affection. Tsume squirmed, uncomfortable. She had often wondered, after her brain injury, if maybe life would’ve been better if she was cared for by her sire’s family. It was very strange to learn now that she really and truly had been wanted.

“Hikaru was with you every day that long month that you were in the neonatal unit, caring for you, hoping and praying she would get to keep you as her daughter.” A small smile drifted across Shikake’s face. “Shinzou was still gone and no one from the Inuzuka clan had stepped forward when the Hokage finally signed your custody over to us. Hikaru was overjoyed when we brought you home.”

Tsume could see it in her mind. She didn’t remember ever seeing or being introduced to Hikaru, but she imagined a tall woman with long dark hair gliding smoothly across the threshold of a quaint little home on the outskirts of the Nara forest, holding a napping baby all bundled up in white. 

“But all good things must come to an end.” Shikake heaved a sigh. “Such a bother… When word finally reached Shinzou, she abandoned her mission and returned immediately to Konoha. That was a severe infraction, in and of itself. Worse, she demanded that you be returned to her clan, even without a signed contract revoking all paternal rights in place. I fought her, naturally, to keep _my_ daughter.”

“But you lost.”

He stilled for a moment. “When the Third Hokage told your grandmother that the Inuzuka clan didn’t have any right to you, she told him that Konoha had no right to the Inuzuka clan. And that night, the entire clan and all their ninken left without a whisper of a warning.”

Tsume felt her stomach drop into her sandal.

“So _that’s_ what happened,” Sakumo said in shock. “I was just a teen when it happened, but the pandemonium was tremendous. Think about it,” he told Tsume, “your clan’s compound is stationed a heartbeat away from Konoha’s main entrance, primarily for security.” He laughed once, partly with bitterness, and partly with admiration. “If I had any doubts that your great-grandmother lacked balls… Your clan’s sense of smell and tracking abilities are indispensable and rivaled only by the Aburame clan. I’m sure you can just imagine how shocking it was that a clan notorious for its loyalty should willingly become a _mass_ of untraceable missing nin.”

_All for me?_ Tsume was dizzy with the implications.

“Well, not _untraceable_ , per se. Or missing nin,” Shikake corrected. “The Aburame had no problem finding the Inuzuka – something that Shinzou could’ve made very difficult, given that she was old-school ninja _and_ the other Hell Hound – and I’m sure the confrontation wouldn’t have been pretty, except the Inuzuka used their skills to stay beyond Konoha’s reach for better than a week. And Shinzou has always been a shrewd woman. She had a treaty with the First Hokage that allows the Inuzuka clan the rights and freedom to break away from Konoha without consequences.” He sighed. “I still have no idea how she managed to obtain _that_ treaty when none of the other clans managed it.”

“Booze and poker,” Sakumo replied. “When negotiations were taking place between the Inuzuka and Senju clans six years after Konohagakure’s birth, Shinzou got Senju Hashirama drunk first on the peace offering, and then they negotiated the treaties between the Inuzuka clan and Konoha based on who won which game of poker. Or at least that’s how Danzo once explained it to me. I suspect that Shinzou’s success in getting the First to agree to such negotiations in the first place might’ve also been due to… ah, a liaison of a questionable nature with Senju Tobirama.”

Shikake looked like he had bit a lemon. “Damn. I guess the rumors that the Second liked older women were true. And I thought it was because she could smell if Hashirama was bluffing.”

“She couldn’t have been _that_ much older, I suspect. Just a decade or so.”

“I shouldn’t exactly throw any stones, since my great-uncle barely to win our forest in a decisive battle of blackjack before losing the rest of our surrounding territory for the First – damn place belonged to the Nara clan generations before Konoha came into being anyway. What a bother. For all that Konoha talks about the greatness of the God of Shinobi, she doesn’t exactly discuss how the First and the Second passed on their terrible drinking or gambling habits to their descendants.”

Sakumo rubbed his nose. “Unlike Tsunade, the First Hokage was actually fairly skilled in winning his gambles. My dad always said that the First deliberately lost several of his gambles to give the clans what they wanted, thereby making them _feel_ like they won when they agreed to join Konoha.”

“Ancestors preserve us if Tsunade ever follows in their footsteps and somehow becomes the Hokage.” Shikake and Sakumo both shuddered in horror. “So, your clan wasn’t even _wrong_ in leaving, Tsume – they didn’t approach any enemies, they always stayed well within the borders of Fire Country, and we managed to keep word of their unorthodox departure quiet from the rest of the shinobi villages. But the chaos caused by Shinzou’s decision made us vulnerable, and would weaken us in the eyes of our enemies when – not if – _when_ word finally got out. Her actions also left the other clans divided and arguing with each other – half the clans admired and supported Shinzou for invoking her clan sovereignty and refusing to allow the Third Hokage to trample such. The other half of the clans despised her for putting a mere baby girl above the needs of Konoha and demanded that the clan be dragged back and put on trial as traitors. Their arguments were getting more violent with each passing day. Civil war would’ve eventually erupted. It was obvious that to keep peace, we had to bring the Inuzuka clan back, and I knew the only way how.”

Tsume thought about Kakashi and how she would give her own life to protect him. But she also understood the necessity of sacrificing one for the whole – that’s what the whole mission at the brothel had been about, after all. It seemed strangely ironic that her life began like a sacrifice. She felt a chill race down her spine as she considered the possibility of her life ending the same way. “You gave me up.”

His forehead twitched. “No. I never gave you _up_. I gave you _back_.”

Tsume swung her dangling feet. “There’s a difference?”

Shikake studied her for a long moment, his hands not moving. With a sigh, he dropped his gaze away from her and resumed stitching. “I suppose in your eyes, no. To prevent an impending civil war, I bundled you up and went with the Aburame trackers. I knew that your great-grandmother would make an appearance once she caught your scent. We were out in the field for two days before she approached. I negotiated with her – I told her that she could have you back only if she and her clan returned to Konoha. She demanded that I drop all claims of paternity. I agreed not to actively press or pursue a claim, but told Shinzou that I would invoke all paternal privileges if you ever sought me out, just as she could invoke her clan’s treaty at any time. Fair was fair, after all. She agreed, eventually. But, Tsume, you never _did_ come looking for me.”

Tsume recalled those times she had seen and stalked him from a distance after her brain injury, and wondered about missed opportunities in life. She vaguely recalled Hidarime telling her after Kakashi’s birth that Tsume was peaceful because she was simple. Hidarime-chan, Tsume thought miserably, had been right. Things were always more peaceful when things were simple.

She pressed her chin to her chest. “I did try looking for you,” she muttered, thumping her ankles against the examination table legs. “When Hidarime-chan taught me how to smell…” What she could remember of that day was confusing; most of what she didn’t remember was hidden within a scarlet-washed, intense pain. Ever since Yuu had entered her mind she occasionally recalled flashes of that day that she hadn’t before. She lifted her chin high to meet her sire’s considering eyes. “We smelled alike, you and me and Shikaku, like the way that Hidarime-chan and I smelled alike. Hidarime said we were family, and I wanted to know my family.” She had been overwhelmed with all the scents though, not just her family’s.

“Ah. I have always wondered how you wound up in our forest.”

“It called.” She couldn’t accurately measure young or old scents even before her brain injury, and Shikake’s scent had pulled her like a tugging string. She remembered following the tugging sensation to the forest, and standing before the iron-wrought gates that blocked the only clear path into the forest. Several deer had stood on the other side of the gates, watching and waiting for someone – not her, she knew, because she was just a small child, but her presence and movement didn’t startle them. Shikaku’s scent entered and exited through the gates multiple times, and she knew it had to be an important place. “And when I touched the gates – I wanted to see the deer better on the other side – it swung open.” That was the last part she could remember with any clear clarity.

Well, there was that voice, old and cold and dark, darker than even Danzo’s scent. She couldn’t remember the man’s face – just the long, spiky white hair and the red, red eyes – or her surroundings. She only remembered the voice because somehow Yuu had jarred the memory loose. There were no images but a wash of red, no sensations except pain, and only the scents of salt and snow in Wind.

_(“Do you know what they say about curiosity and cats, child?”_

_“No, Uchiha-ojisan. I’m Inuzuka – we don’t have cats.”_

_“Doesn’t matter. You’ll learn that dogs die just as easily as cats.”)_

The scents that day had been tremendous and wonderful, but they’d never been painful no matter how much chakra she channeled to her nose, not until after that moment. Scents at that level of sensitivity were now agonizing. Tsume trembled as a terrible thought occurred to her. “Do you think… If I never went in to the forest, what would’ve happened? With us?”

Shikake completed the stitching. He washed her arm down again. “Wishing for what could’ve been is a useless pursuit of imagination and energy that only leaves us with regrets.”

“I… I suppose so.” Tsume wracked her brain to remember who Uchiha Madara was, other than the man who met her in the Nara forest. Something about South Sea raiders and stabbing the First Hokage?

Shikake picked up a roll of gauze and began winding it around her arm. “With the death of your sister, you are the heir of the clan. Shinzou has very little time remaining in this world, and the responsibilities and leadership of the clan will fall upon your young shoulders once she’s deceased.”

Tsume’s breath hitched. “What will that mean for you?”

“Whatever you want it to. You’ll always be an Inuzuka, just as you are a Nara. Even if your name never reflects that, our forest will always open up to your blood. You’re young, and your mother’s clan must come first, but if you need assistance or even just a quiet ear in which to confide problems, I’m always here. I’ll always be waiting; I never stopped.” He secured the gauze and rifled through the pocket of his medical apron for a small tube of ointment. Shikake tossed it to Sakumo, who caught it one-handed. “Apply the ointment twice a day for two weeks to prevent infection, and then have the stitches removed.”

“Will do,” Sakumo said, tucking the ointment into one of his vest pockets.

Shikake helped Tsume slide off the bench. “The main forces will be leaving in a wave to crush opposing forces; the wounded are going to be transferred back to Konoha, and I suspect that Tsume and Kokoro will be on the train.”

“Yes. I will be accompanying them, as will Kushina.”

Shikake rubbed Tsume’s shoulders. “I have to go with the main forces as head of the Medical Division, since Tsunade is expected to be fighting. I’ll see you when I return to Konoha.”

Tsume threw her arms around Shikake. The skin on her left arm felt tight and numb. “Thank you,” she whispered against his sternum.

He returned her hug, and then waved her off. “I wish I could’ve done more.”

Tsume followed Sakumo towards the exit of the tent, and then hesitated. “Wait. I have something else I have to tell Grandmother.” She didn’t want things to end between her and Grandmother on a sour, bitter note. Grandmother _did_ care for and love Tsume at one time; there was no other reason Grandmother would’ve made the entire clan uproot their loyalties and leave their beloved home, no matter what any treaty or contract said… well, there was a lot of pride involved too, which always seemed like a good enough reason to Grandmother, but some of it _had_ to be love. It just _had_ to be.

And, after all, Tsume was a more forgiving soul, and such was one of the ways she knew that she was a better person than Grandmother.

When Sakumo tucked his hands into his pockets and leaned against a pole to wait, Tsume hurried to the other end of the tent.

The privacy screens were still erected around Grandmother’s cot. Grandmother was on a pallet with the shattered cot remains swept to the side. Her four ninken lay side by side behind Grandmother’s curled back, their heads resting on their paws and their odor thick with sorrow. Grandmother’s hand, stained with Tsume’s blood, was extended forward on the ground. She had raked grooves in the hard-packed soil. The med nin with the dark skin knelt beside Grandmother, his fingertips resting against the pulse point on the inside of Grandmother’s bloodstained wrist.

“Grandmother?” Tsume kept her voice in a quiet whisper. “I’m not sorry that I made you angry, but I am sorry for hurting you. I meant what I said about being better, because I want the best for our clan the way that you do. I still love you.”

Grandmother didn’t stir. Neither did her static scent.

The med nin sighed and stood upright, dusting his hands off; his expression was grim. The four ninken whined in unison.

“Oh,” Tsume whispered, pressing the back of her left hand to her mouth as her eyes stung with tears. For once, she wished that her nose could lie to her.

“I’m sorry, kid,” the med nin said as he led Tsume away. “She’s already gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Tsume, her arms just can't catch a break.


	17. Alpha Years - Chapter Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the changes from the original Litter of Misfits. The last chapters of the Alpha Years were MASSIVE - we're talking 10K+ words. I decided to split the chapters in different places, so they were more manageable lengths. (Just as a side note, I feel that 5k+ words is an acceptable chapter length. Personally, I try to for 2k as minimal.) 
> 
> Jealousy is a normal human emotion and reaction. We are such social creatures that it is normal to crave the feedback of our fellow humans. It's why children strive to please their guardians, why adults desire to receive validation from their peers. Tsume has had to struggle with adults realizing their failure - she's not only on the receiving end of their attempt to protect her, but also being the object of their validation: They are make themselves feel better by helping her, because they feel better if they do something about the situation, not because they actually want to help. In addition to all of that, Tsume has the backlash of her peers that she must suffer. The peers are jealous of the attention that Tsume receives, as they themselves crave this attention, but the peers don't understand why Tsume is the recipient of such attention. Except for Minato, who is like, dude, Tsume needs all the help she can get, I gladly accept the adults helping me in this endeavor. (I have convinced myself that Minato is a Saint. And I Love Him. Although I have had four glasses of wine, so it may just be the alcohol talking.)
> 
> Probably not as interesting as the perspective of the abused child is the perspective of the Author, who does, in fact, have synesthesia. The author can feel the color of music, in that music has color, and color has feelings, and therefore, music feels like color. (When people always described music as "colorful", this made perfect sense. Of course music is colorful!) Along that line, Sakumo understands emotions like color. It's not a bloodline limit; it's just synesthesia. 
> 
> (Synesthesia is FASCINATING. Did you know that there are medical professionals whose synesthesia is such that their sense of touch overlaps with their sense of empathy? There's at least one doctor and one nurse who, once they lay their hands upon their patients, EXPERIENCE THE SAME SYMPTOMS. This is magnificent, and this drunk author could wax at length the wonders of two inter-sectional senses. The brain is SUCH A MAGNIFICENT ORGAN.)

Sakumo gently guided Tsume to the mess tent with his hand on her right shoulder, careful not to press or push to avoid causing any more undue pain. Four ninken, each the size of a small horse, followed after in a sullen silence. Tsume’s face was bare again, since she had scrubbed it clean to remove all traces of her blood and tears. “There won’t be much of a selection since it’s outside the main mealtimes,” Sakumo told her, “but there’s always something available for passing nin. Kushina should still be there.”

“What about Kokoro-chan?” Tsume asked.

Sakumo’s shoulders rounded forward as he scratched the back of his neck. “Kokoro-chan… I’ll explain over some grub. There’s something you and Kushina both need to know before you see her.”

“Kokoro-chan’s not dying.” Tsume was certain of that. “I didn’t smell death on her the same way I could smell it on Grandmother two days ago…” She tried very hard not to remember the still, unmoving body and the static scent, and resented how easily the memory flitted through her mind. She wondered with mounting guilt if Grandmother would’ve lived for a few moments longer, if she hadn’t destroyed the cot while Grandmother still laid upon it. “Is she hurt, badly?” Kokoro didn’t smell of leaking gastric fluid and infection.

Sakumo sighed as he steered her though the wide open entrance of the mess hall. It smelled of rank foods and stale grease, and Tsume felt her stomach swim towards her throat. The mess hall was mostly empty, with small bunches of ninja and samurai seated in their own groups. In the far corner was Kushina and Jiraiya’s team (minus Jiraiya). Kushina noticed Tsume and Sakumo’s entrance immediately, and began bouncing up and down with her arms waving wildly. Minato ducked to avoid being clobbered, and Osamu hastily scooted outside the reach of Kushina’s swinging arms.

Tsume waved back as Sakumo dropped his hand away from her shoulder and stepped forward, grabbing two bowls from the stack of clean dishes. He held one and balanced the other in the crook of his elbow.

“I can carry my own bowl,” Tsume said.

Sakumo fondly ruffled her hair, ignoring the way Grandmother’s ninken growled in warning at his casual invasion of her personal space. “Indulge me. Kushina was abducted from _my_ side when I was lying unconscious in a ditch, and _you_ were dead as of, oh, three hours ago. I think that fussing over you is the least I deserve after all the hair on my head that you two have turned white.”

Tsume snorted. “How can you tell, sensei?”

“Hey.” He tapped his head, just above his ear. “It all just turned white ahead of time on account of karma that had yet to be earned.” Sakumo headed to the buffet where pots of cold barbequed pork, half-dry rice, and pickled vegetables sat. After eyeing Tsume’s arms and the ninken, he filled both bowls with a generous amount of pork. “You need iron,” he said knowingly. Then he added a smidgeon of rice and another generous heap of pickled vegetables. “And growing children should always eat their vegetables.”

“Did you just add pickled radishes? You know I hate pickled radishes!”

Sakumo ignored her. He grabbed two pairs of chopsticks, two tin cups, and a spare fire-clay jug of water, and made his way to where Kushina was seated. They walked through the rows of tatami mats, careful not to step on any, and the ninken followed single-file with their great heads hung low. Most of the ninja recognized Sakumo and called out greetings; the samurai watched silently with brows creased unhappily. Samurai from Iron County didn’t approve of how young many ninja were, especially when the young ninja looked as battered as Tsume did.

“What happened?” Kushina demanded loudly as Tsume awkwardly plopped herself on the ground between Minato and Sakumo. “Every time I turn around and leave you alone, you find a new way to hurt yourself!”

Tsume accepted the chopsticks that Sakumo offered. Her left arm was stiff and still numb from the unguent that Shikake had applied. She dropped the chopsticks when she tried to work her fingers. “No, no, I can get this,” she told Sakumo as she attempted to pick the chopsticks up. The silence was awkward as they rolled away from her clumsy, pinching grasp. _Oh, gosh._ Four more attempts later, Tsume held her hand out expectedly. “Just hand me the bowl.”

“I can feed you,” Kushina offered with a smile.

“No!” Tsume felt her cheeks burn at the thought of being fed like a _baby_. “I can take care of myself!”

Minato peeked through the shredded remains of her sleeve to look at the bandages that covered Grandmother’s lacerations. Acting on reflex (because it was Mooncalf), Tsume elbowed him in the side. She felt something sting in her arm, just a faint release of pressure without sensation, and she instantly regretted it when Sakumo immediately reminded her not to tear any stitches. “Uh…” She hunched her shoulders and tried to ignore the faint smell of blood.

Sakumo handed her a bowl, most likely figuring that she was unlikely to elbow Minato again if she were holding food.

Kushina gasped. “Stitches? That does it – you are never leaving my sight again, believe it!” Kushina raised a triumphant fist in the air as something briefly swirled around her – a vapory outline of red, almost like long tendrils fanning around her body. When Tsume blinked, the vapory outline was gone. Behind her, she felt Grandmother’s ninken bristle dangerously. She didn’t understand the language they and Grandmother had shared, but she recognized the shift in their scents. Also, Hotaru was eying Kushina oddly.

Tsume whirled around and dumped the contents of the bowl upside down on the ground. “Eat!” she commanded them. They studied her for a moment, their eyes unblinking and heads lowered, half-gathered for a forward lunge. Tsume leaned forward and sustained her own unblinking stare before tension finally melted away from Ichi and San and they began nosing the food. Ni and Shi soon followed suit. Tsume turned back to her companions, blinking rapidly because her eyes now stung from being dry.

“Those are your grandmother’s ninken,” Hotaru said. Tsume could hear the buzz of Hotaru’s kikaichu as Hotaru shifted her weight restlessly on her knees. “Is she…?”

Tsume stole a pickled beet out of Sakumo’s bowl and stuffed it in her mouth as her eyes stung in a different way.

“I’m sorry,” Minato said, tugging Tsume’s shredded sleeve. He patted her upper arm twice in comfort, and his touch was unusually gentle.

Kushina nodded in agreement as she sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Me too. Tsume-chan has lost so much of her family.”

Tsume shrugged and swallowed. (“ _Why does the **wrong** great-granddaughter live?”)_ “Nothing to be sorry about.” Tsume tried to ignore the swelling ache beneath her breast and the looming emptiness watching over her shoulder. “I got to see her before she died.” The beet was too sweet for Tsume and set her teeth on edge. She stuffed one of Sakumo’s pickled onions into her mouth., and chewed, so she didn’t have to mention just how _glad_ she was that Grandmother would get the shallow grave before Tsume did. (Actually, Grandmother would be burned in the funeral pyre tonight, but Tsume planned on shoving some of the ashes into a shallow hole just outside the camp, kicking some dirt over it, and maybe spitting on it for good measure.)

“Still,” Sakumo said, pouring water into one of the tin cups. “It’s okay to grieve, no matter what was said or done before she died.”

Tsume half-choked on the onion, and managed to fend off Minato’s thumping hand to her back before Grandmother’s ninken could perceive this as a threat.

“What was done?” Kushina asked, tilting her head to the side. Her eyes widened as she looked at Tsume’s shredded right arm with new horror. “Your _grandmother_ did _that_? How _could_ she?”

Tsume rapidly stuffed another pickled onion into her mouth, and felt her arm twinge again. She really hoped, if she needed to get her stitches repaired, that Shikake wasn’t on-duty. She didn’t know how much more emotional ups and downs she could take in one day.

“Enough,” Sakumo said, just as Danzo joined them. Danzo favored his right leg as he sat cross-legged between Sakumo and Hotaru, one small bowl of rice in his hands. His hamstring must be bothered him more than usual if he wasn’t going to kneel like everyone else. “Jiraiya told me that you were debriefing with Orochimaru. How did that go?”

Danzo said nothing for a moment as he chewed a mouthful of rice slowly. “Orochimaru’s mobilizing all forces to strike against the enemy. Mifune-sama has graciously volunteered to accompany the worst of the wounded Konoha nin and allies to Konoha since our hospital is the best equipped, best-staffed even now, and further away from the fighting than the Capital. You and your team will be accompanying the train of wounded, as will I.” His eye scanned Osamu, Hotaru, and Minato, skipping right over Tsume. “The rest of you will go with Jiraiya, and I have no idea where he’s been assigned.”

Danzo’s face was carefully blank, but Tsume wrinkled her nose at the stench of humiliation and anger that rolled off him in waves. She grabbed a piece of barbequed pork out of Sakumo’s bowl, and then froze with it half-way to her mouth when Danzo finally aimed his piercing glare on her.

_It’s my fault._ Tsume felt another rush of guilt. _Orochimaru benched Danzo because he grabbed me when he wasn’t supposed to._ She hunched her shoulders and carefully nibbled on the corner of the pork, since she didn’t know any special jutsu that would make the earth open up and swallow her. Between learning of her sister’s death and being on the receiving end of Shinzou’s last spiteful words, Tsume almost wished that Danzo had left her at the brothel. All the physical pain in the world she had experienced as a prostitute couldn’t compare to the emotional pain clenching around her heart.

Sakumo studied Danzo for a moment as he poured water into a tin cup, and then handed it to Tsume. He clicked his tongue. “It doesn’t really make sense to me to bench the best when this could be the turning point in the war.”

Danzo’s glare didn’t soften as he continued to study Tsume. His eye slowly dragged from her left arm to her right arm, and she smelled his anger spike as his fingers tightened white-knuckled around his bowl. “What is Konoha,” he asked softly, “if we fail to protect our most vulnerable?”

Sakumo tilted his head. “Hmm. You know, I never thought of it like that. Sounds like something the Third would say, and it does make more sense to have our strongest protect our weakest.” He sighed. “And the wounded will be very weak and vulnerable. Tsume, Kushina.” He set his bowl of food in front of Tsume so she wouldn’t have to reach far. “The shockwave from the blast knocked me unconscious. It killed your sister,” he nodded to Tsume, “and it created an opening amidst the confusion that allowed the enemy to abduct you.” He nodded to Kushina. “Kokoro was also caught in the shockwave. Because she was smaller and lighter than me, Kokoro was thrown further and landed harder.” He was quiet for a moment, and then sighed. “Her back was broken. Tsunade-hime might’ve been able to heal her, but she’s only concentrating on those who would die without her assistance… The med nin feel Kokoro is very unlikely to ever be able to walk again.”

Tsume dropped her half-eaten pork as her appetite shriveled to nothing.

oOoOoOo

Sakumo let Kushina and Tsume visit one at a time. A brief argument occurred between the girls because Kushina said that Kokoro should see Tsume first, and then Tsume said that Kushina should be seen first because Kokoro’s hope and fear for Kushina would be more suspenseful than the ongoing assumption that Tsume was dead. Sakumo solved the problem by sending Kushina in first so Tsume could sit on the ground in the shade of the hospital tent and rest a moment. There was several hospital tents in Orochimaru’s camp, all separated from each other to decrease the number of wounded concentrated to any single location. This tent entrance was guarded by two samurai, who stood unmoving despite their heavy armor and the hot sun beating down on them. Tsume tried to offer them her water, but they politely declined.

Tsume sighed and pulled at some lonely-looking tufts of grass as three ninken settled around her without touching, and the fourth – Ichi – rested his head on her lap with a forlorn whine. She scratched him behind the ears as Sakumo folded his arms and waited. He studied Tsume, letting the grateful joy at seeing her alive (but not well, no, not after the battering her tender heart had been through in the last hour, much less last four months) lift his spirits.

Sakumo wouldn’t trade having Tsume back for anything in the world – not even to have his dearest Hidarime returned, even though he knew that was a hole in his heart that would likely never be filled. Hidarime had lived a life – however short it had been, especially the time spent with him and their son – in which she _knew_ and _felt_ she was loved, and Tsume was struggling to find validation and love, since it had clearly been withheld from her since her brain injury. He smiled at Tsume. “Kakashi will be _so_ happy to see you again.”

Tsume looked up from the ground as her face brightened at the mention of her nephew. Her eyes lit up like two gleaming lights, and for a brief moment she looked hauntingly like her ten year old self. “I’m so glad. Kushina-chan told me that Aunt Natsumi was taking care of him.”

“Yes. For being such an odd woman, she does very well with children – even boys.”

“Aunt Natsumi’s daughters are dead, but I think it’s the twin boys that made her crazy.” Tsume tugged a burr out of Ichi’s neck. As her smile dropped away, Sakumo was struck by how alien she appeared. Darkness circled her eyes and her face had a pinched, feral angle that hadn’t been there when he saw her last year at the failed graduation. Whatever had happened to Tsume, it had forged her, like the constant strike of a hammer against white-hot metal.

Tsume shifted her weight, drawing up her right knee without disturbing Ichi. She rested her bandaged left arm in the crook of the ninken’s neck. “Aunt Natsumi had twin daughters, but they were killed in the same attack that gave her the big old scar on her face and ruined her nose. It was the only battle she ever lost. Her daughters had been kidnapped by a clan… I can’t remember their name, sorry. Anyway, Aunt Natsumi fought for three days without rest to rescue her daughters, and was alone and tired and nearly out of chakra by the time she found them. The enemy used the girls as shields and Aunt Natsumi pulled her attack, so the leader smashed her in the face with his staff. They killed the girls, who were, like, four years old and of no use to that clan. I guess the other men thought that the leader gave Aunt Natsumi a killing blow or something, because they just assumed she was dead. And there she was, probably the first woman they’d seen in months, and her body was still warm, so they used it. That was, gosh… sixty years ago?”

While Tsume ticked off her fingers and appeared to be counting up the years, Sakumo sadly reflected how battlefield rapes hadn’t grown any less common or any less brutal for kunoichi in the last fifty years.

“I know it happened a little after Konoha’s birth. It’s one of the reasons why Grandmother decided to finally join, because Aunt Natsumi was her younger sister, see, and I guess roaming out in the open was making it harder and harder to keep the Pack safe.” Tsume looked lost for a moment, shrinking back into herself as she talked about Shinzou.

Sakumo knew that Tsume had spoken to Shinzou before she died, today. Based upon his last experience with Shinzou yesterday – he had crossed paths with her because she had been in the same tent as Kokoro, which prompted the med nin in moving Kokoro to a different tent so that another humiliating public row wouldn’t take place – Sakumo figured that Shinzou’s last words had been every bit as cruel with Tsume as they had been with Sakumo.

Sakumo spared a brief iota of grief for a woman who had seen and lived the history of Konoha’s founding, truly one of the last of the generation of shinobi who had grown up in a world where Hidden Villages didn’t exist. As cruel and as daunting as Inuzuka Shinzou was, she had been an admirable kunoichi who faced down greater shinobi without loss of pride or ability, especially in a world that was unfavorable to kunoichi, or women in general. Only two other kunoichi in her days matched her in skill and talent, and _one_ of them had been the jinchuuriki for the greatest of the tailed demons, and the other had the legendary Uzumaki regeneration and an army of summons.

Inzuka Shinzou had been unbelievably skilled to have survived, still strong and fighting, for nearly a century. Konoha was less than sixty years old; Shinzou had survived the first three decades of her life outside of its walls. Sakumo would consider himself in very good shape if he could maintain his current health and skills by the time he was sixty, _if_ he managed to live that long.

“Aunt Natsumi got pregnant from the rape, and she had twin boys. She wanted to keep the boys because the clan was safe at Konoha, but Grandmother told her no, the clan would never claim any sons. Grandmother stole the twins away at night when Aunt Natsumi was recovering from the birth, and left them deep in the woods to die from exposure, although Aunt Bashira said the twins were stillborn, and Aunt Natsumi couldn’t accept it – she thought they were sleeping, even though they didn’t draw any breath.

“Anyway, Aunt Natsumi couldn’t track them down, because that blow to her face ruined her sense of smell. See, Aunt Natsumi also has a brain injury, except it’s not the same as mine. She can’t smell anything, and she can’t see in colors anymore, and she’s got no sense of direction. Can’t tell the difference between right and left, that sort of thing. Probably wouldn’t tell the difference between up and down if it weren’t for gravity. She got really, really lost when she went after Grandmother. Aunt Natsumi told me that the boys were reincarnations of her daughters, because they were conceived the same day the girls were killed, see.” 

Aaaaaaand _there_ went any and all bits of grief and admiration he had for the ruthless, heartless woman who had abused Tsume for years, flying away like ashes strewn in the wind.

“Also, I don’t know why people think _Grandmother_ had sex with the Second Hokage. Grandmother figured that men were only useful for, uh, donating sperm, I think she said. I only remember Grandmother’s lovers being women. Aunt Natsumi though, she really adored the Second Hokage. She was always talking about him, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they had sex.” Tsume frowned for a moment, lost in thought. Sakumo had heard Danzo complain often enough about how inappropriate the Second Hokage and Aunt Natsumi had been in front of Team Tobirama. “In fact, I’m pretty sure they did. Aunt Natsumi always said that Tobirama had the best stamina and the most talented hands, and he really, really loved her piercings. I _still_ don’t get how nipple piercings would be fun to play with, but now I get why he liked her lower piercing.”

Okay. Well. _There_ were some details of the esteemed Second Hokage that Sakumo could’ve lived his entire life without ever learning. And damn his mind for imagining his darling Tsume-chan sporting some very inappropriately-placed jewelry. It easily explained why Danzo seemed unusually traumatized from his experience with Team Tobirama. “Your clan has a very fascinating history,” Sakumo said carefully, trying to think Appropriate Thoughts. “Not always very pretty, but truly fascinating.” And to think how shocked he had been when Hidarime got her belly button pierced after having Kakashi!

He also briefly considered just how nipple piercings would be fun to play with, and then decided to keep that information far from Tsume.

Tsume dropped her knee down and crossed her ankles. She removed another burr from Ichi’s neck. Sakumo couldn’t smell emotions like Tsume or Hidarime, but he didn’t need to. He could see the colors of emotions – heard the whispers of the heart, he once tried to explain to Danzo, because his ability to feel, see, and hear emotions wasn’t a Bloodline Limit as he understood Bloodline Limits to be. (“ _Most people would say that hearing whispers is an unhealthy sign, you overemotional fool.”)_

Months in captivity had changed Tsume’s little blue heart. It was still the same color of the skies in the height of a summer day, and still bravely bore all its wounds and scars. His tenacious grasp on her emotions felt off-center though, with her trying to slide away from him to protect him from the trauma she had suffered.

Sakumo had known, upon hearing her alive, that Tsume would bear new scars of brutality. He hadn’t expected _this_ many scars, or that they ran so deep, nor did he imagine that she would ever be tainted with an ugly black blot. The little blue heart limped instead of fluttering and floating. Gone was the buzz of contentment. Her heart couldn’t silence the whispers of despair or loneliness.

At the core of her heart there still existed a lonely child constantly seeking a place to call her own, but never quite finding a welcoming mat. She was a daughter who he had instantly loved every bit as ferociously and as deeply as his son. These new walls built around her heart were haphazard and brittle. It was as if Tsume didn’t know _why_ she was trying to protect herself, only that she _had_ to, and she would gladly bust them down if a friendly hand stretched toward her from the other side.

As long as he had known her, Tsume had always been a misfit in society, whether polite or otherwise. She had probably been no less a misfit in her captivity. She moved like she was a stranger to the world, as if she was a plain, white go stone that accidentally wandered onto a shougi game, but wasn’t going to let being the wrong game piece be a barrier to claiming her own little niche on the board. To be fair, Sakumo certainly felt like the world had rearranged itself into different shapes since Hidarime’s death, because he didn’t feel like fitting, either.

Like being a crescent-shaped peg trying to fit into a triangular hole – or a go stone amidst the shougi lances and knights.

Sakumo settled on the ground beside Tsume on the grass. Ni and San growled at him as he intruded into their very large, very invisible bubbles, but were silenced when Tsume waved them quiet with a single harsh chop of her hand and an unblinking glare. Undeterred, Ichi thumped his tail and raised his head to give Sakumo a hopeful look.

Sakumo chuckled and scratched Ichi behind his hears. “Minus the whole history about the children,” Sakumo said as Tsume drew her knees up and rested her chin on them, “you just can’t find fault with a clan that is as loved by dogs as yours. It’s like hating a puppy, even when it chews on your slipper. It just can’t be done.” When Tsume’s melancholic air still hovered like a grumpy cloud, he added, “Kuromaru misses you.”

Another little smile brightening her face again. “I’m never leaving him behind, ever again,” she promised. “Life is really lonely when you don’t have a friend at your side, and once you’ve got a friend, you realize you never want to go back to having none.”

Friends were more important to Tsume than family, because family had failed Tsume in so many ways. Friends, however – they have proven their loyalty, and loyalty was such an important characteristic of an alpha. Sakumo moved his hand from Ichi’s ears to the top of Tsume’s hair and ruffled it. “Whether or not we’re presently at your side, we will always be friends.”

The smile dropped away from her face, her eyes wide. Her hair, pressed flat by his hand, framed her face in a way that emphasized her resemblance to a younger Shinzou. Sakumo didn’t move his hand and refused to let his emotions shift, because Tsume would instantly sense the distance. “Really?” she asked in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. “No matter what… what happened?”

He slid his hand from her hair to her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. He was grateful beyond words that she didn’t find his physical contact repulsive. “No matter what happened to you or what you did, it will never change how I feel about you.” Especially not when he considered Tsume like a daughter who entered his life the same time that Kakashi had – it was really a great two-for-one deal, Sakumo had said when he successfully talked Danzo into moving a sleeping Tsume from beneath his hospital bed onto the mattress beside him.

( _“That’s just the IV morphine talking, you bubblebrain. You can’t really expect a **deal** when she’s just a brain-injured brat with an uncanny good fortune and slightly exceptional nose. I’ll grant you that she’s at least housebroken though, which is more than I can say for your leaky offspring.”_

_“How was I supposed to know that Kakashi projectile-burps? Besides, you’re an ANBU captain and a jounin who was trained by the Second Hokage. What would Tobirama-sensei say if he knew that his protégée couldn’t duck a spitting baby?”_

_“He’d be too busy forcing you through much-needed remedial training to say anything to me. Or experimenting on your son. My team and I were usually busy making sure that the Second was kept far, far away from the young and impressionable for a very good reason, otherwise we’d have a **lot** more sadistic, violent, alcoholic gamblers running around.”_

_“Huh. Never thought about that. Well, I don’t know anything about brain injuries, but I know the language of the heart. And this child’s heart is the sweetest I’ve ever heard.”)_

And Danzo, who kept his own brittle heart barricaded behind a veritable maze of barbed wire and exploding tags, hidden in a fortress of granite, shrugged and told Sakumo every remarkable thing that this delightful ten year old had done, from receiving Kakashi from Shinzou, to tracking Sakumo down, and everything in between.

(“ _A butthead! Hahahahahahaha!”_

_“You do realize the only reason I’m not smothering you with your own pillow is because the Slug Princess would attempt to kill me for ruining all the hard work and energy she poured into saving your worthless life and limb.”_

_“She called you – phhhhht! – a butthead! Hahahahahaha! Oh man, I wish I could’ve seen the look on your face!”_

_“Further proof that her brain injury destroyed her capacity to produce and feel fear.”)_

And further proof that Tsume _clearly_ needed someone like Sakumo in her life, guarding and guiding her in the ways that her clan should’ve but didn’t, that her sire could’ve but wouldn’t. Everyone else always made up excuses for why Tsume _couldn’t_ get the guidance and teaching she needed, but Sakumo knew that the excuses had to stop somewhere, and someone needed to step forward. He figured that someone ought to be him, and not just peripherally because she had attached herself to Kakashi like a stubborn, possessive little hedgehog.

Pressed against his side in the tight hug, Tsume hunched down like she was trying to minimize herself as a viable target. “I got Danzo benched.” She sounded so utterly miserable and so very close to crying. “It’s _my_ fault that he’s in trouble with Orochimaru.”

“Tsume, you can’t take the weight of the world upon your shoulders. The captain is a big boy fully capable of taking care of himself. It’s not like you planned this entire time to be held captive until he just happened along with his own mission that coincided with yours, and then you seduced him into taking you along.”

The silence was far more awkward than his gentle sarcasm should’ve warranted. Sakumo lifted his arm. Tsume peered at him over her kneecaps with bruised-looking eyes, her expression pinched and haunted. The whispers of brutality that he heard took on a whole new pitch and tone as the limping heart wilted in shame, sinking low. “Oh, _Tsume._ ” Suddenly, all the different little things that Sakumo had filed under _bizarre_ and _suspicious_ when he learned of Tsume’s death – they were now starting to coagulate into a single nightmare, like the shadows of dead bodies melting together into one horrendous monster.

Tsume pressed her face against her kneecaps and sniffled. “I’m sorry. I fucked… up Danzo.”

Sakumo felt her keening pain. His mind darted lightning-chakra fast through different implications and scenarios. He callously felt grateful that Hidarime was beyond the realm of knowing what had been done to Tsume – what _had_ _been_ happening, because Hidarime never would’ve forgiven herself for not tearing the world apart in her haste to rescue her baby sister.

The night before Hidarime died, when she had rested in his arms after making love for the last time, tangled in their combined bedrolls, Hidarime had made Sakumo swear a solemn oath on everything he held dear – including Kakashi – to always look out for Tsume. (“ _I failed her, and she needs someone who hasn’t failed her. You’re the only person who’s ever looked out for Tsume-chan without failing._ ”)

“The captain is a responsible adult who’s quite capable of looking out for himself, Tsume.” Sakumo was proud of himself for having the right mix of cheer and sympathy in his voice. “And trust me when I say that whatever decision the captain made was done with full awareness and regard to the consequences.” And if it had been anyone _but_ Danzo, Sakumo would meet them in a dark, isolated forest with his chakra saber drawn and fully charged.

Sakumo doubted that he would survive an encounter with Danzo if he went after the man with killing intent, and he _had_ sworn to Hidarime that he would always look out for Tsume. It would be very difficult to keep his oath if he got himself killed, although he was _quite_ sure that he would be able to take Danzo down with him.

Something had to be done.

Tsume hunched lower. Ichi whined and nudged her knee, pressing his bulky head beneath the crook of her left elbow. She mumbled something about her responsibility. Sakumo didn’t respond, because he knew that the Inuzuka gnawed and worried on their guilt the same way a dog gnawed on their favorite bone. He also knew that he just couldn’t take that burden away with well-meaning words – distraction was the best cure for such ails.

Sakumo’s distraction arrived via Kushina exiting the tent. There was a forceful bounce in her step, like she wore a bright and happy face for the sake of another. Not unexpected – Kushina also wore her heart on a labeled banner hoisted high for all to see, and her disguises were inadequate. Of his three girls, only Kokoro guarded her heart and controlled her emotions, and she had become quite skilled at both in the last two weeks as the shame of her inadequacies and resentment toward her disability covered her heart like a death shroud.

“It’s your turn!” Kushina declared brightly as she bounced to a halt before them. “I didn’t let Kokoro-chan know that you’re alive and want to see her, too. I thought that the surprise would be really nice since she seems so down.” Her eyes were dewy and red-rimmed. “So I’ll just wait out here with Sakumo-sensei.”

Tsume hunched down lower for a moment, before finally standing. She moved slowly, as if weighed down by a large object. The four ninken stood with her and followed after as she headed for the entrance. San shook her coat so a cloud of dust and loose hair went flying.

“Tsume?”

She halted at Sakumo’s voice, and then looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were wide and… not _fearful_ , but sad and reluctant.

Sakumo smiled at her. “It’ll go much better than it did with your grandmother.”

Tsume unexpectedly grinned at that. “That’s really not hard to do, Sakumo-sensei. Even facing Orochimaru would go better.”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll go better than with Orochimaru-sensei, too. It’s _okay_ to hope for the better.”

“Shinobi Rule #7 – Kakashi’s shampoo – always expect and prepare for the worst, especially before it’s too late.”

Hmmm. Fair enough, he supposed. But it was time for Tsume to learn more than just the Shinobi Rules that defined the core of the Academy’s teachings. “Sakumo’s Rule #3: hope for the best, and never fear reaching for the unattainable.”

She scrunched her nose up in horror. “Oh no! I don’t have to memorize all your rules, too, do I?”

Kushina sighed and rolled her eyes as she flopped down on the ground beside Sakumo. “Good luck learning them,” she told Tsume knowingly. Then she added, in a whisper loud enough for the entire camp to hear, “Just don’t tell sensei this, but I think he makes it up as he goes. The _last_ rule #3 he told me was about always make sure I packed spare clean underwear.”

Tsume glanced between Kushina and Sakumo. “That’s our secret?”

“Sure. Like I said, don’t tell sensei. He thinks he’s doing a pretty good job, and he really is, but I don’t want him to get a big head out of it.” Kushina winked as she patted Sakumo’s elbow condescendingly.

“Sensei,” Sakumo said, his voice dry as Tsume entered the tent, “has very capable ears. And packing clean underwear is always a sign that you’re hoping for the best, so they’re like Rule #3a and Rule #3b.”

Kushina wrinkled her nose at him. “Oh yeah? And what about your _first_ Rule #3: always try to succeed the first time, since the paperwork has to be done in triplicate?” 

oOoOoOo

Kokoro was sitting upright on her cot, her long dark purple hair pulled back in a sloppy bun at the crown of her head. A grey wool blanket covered her from toes to waist, and she wore a simple green cotton blouse that was well-worn and faded. Her lap was filled with multiple surgical tools. She frowned in concentration as she whet a scalpel against the sharpening stone. Kokoro was bound and determined to be useful, if only with her hands, no matter how small her role and assistance might be.

Tsume silently studied her friend for a few moments, ignoring the other bed-bound occupants that surrounded her. Grandmother’s four ninken crowded close, equally silent. Tsume had imagined the worst – poor Kokoro suspended from a sea of bandages and casts, small and fragile and just a shadow of herself like Grandmother had been. Instead, Kokoro looked mostly like the last time Tsume had seen her, minus some fading yellow and green bruises on the left side of her face. Kokoro’s dark eyes were still sharp, and her hands were steady, quick, and sure in their movements. Tsume breathed in deep and slow, decreasing her olfaction because of the surrounding stench of pain, infection, incontinence, and depression.

The scent of Kokoro’s contentment and relief, tinged with a hint of bitterness, mingled with the scent of Kushina’s happiness.

Tsume started to approach silently, and then realized that sneaking up on Kokoro when she’s supposed to be dead and Kokoro was armed to the teeth probably wasn’t a good thing. Tsume was sick and tired of getting crushed, broken, raped, and sliced; she _really_ didn’t want to be skewered on top of everything else.

She pushed on San’s flanks with her left hand. “Go to Kokoro,” she whispered firmly. “Go to her.” She felt a lot better with a solid wall of ninken between her and Kokoro’s sharp pointy objects. Well aware that she was the sacrificial lamb, San gave Tsume a dirty look, but obeyed. Tsume waited until Kokoro was looking up from her sharpening stone, eyed widening in surprise, before hurrying after with a laugh.

“Kokoro-chan!” Tsume yelled. She ignored the harsh whispered “Hush!” from med nin and support staff alike, and the cries from those whose rest had been disturbed. Kokoro froze with her mouth open as Tsume skidded to a halt beside the cot as the scalpel’s edge turned towards her. San and Shi growled in warning. “Aaaaaw,” Tsume groaned as the point poked her in the ribs, but didn’t draw blood. “I was hoping to avoid that.”

“Are you a genjutsu?” Kokoro demanded as her eyebrows dipped dangerously low. The pressure from the scalpel increased uncomfortably, and Tsume retreated two steps. Kokoro smelled of surprise and anger. “No doubt a cruel trick that Inuzuka Shinzou has decided to pull!” Two spots of color appeared high in Kokoro’s cheeks. She leaned forward and yelled, “Why don’t you just die and leave me alone, you bitter old bat! There’s a circle in hell that needs its mistress!”

“Here, here!” declared the Jomae nin who was stuck in a bed opposite from Kokoro, raising his fist in solidarity as Tsume glanced behind herself at him.

Gosh, this was awkward. Tsume didn’t know what to do with her arms, because she couldn’t cross them in front of her, put them behind herself, or hug Kokoro. Not that she would hug Kokoro right now even if her arms were okay, because Kokoro looked like she wanted to stab someone, and Tsume was an easy target. “Um, Grandmother _is_ dead,” Tsume said finally. “She died right after I got back and spoke with her. I haven’t been in the camp very long. I… I was with Kushina-chan’s rescue party, so we came back together.”

“The gods are kind to us!” declared the Jomae nin.

Kokoro studied Tsume suspiciously as she flicked her thumb over the edge of the scalpel. Blood dribbled onto the grey blanket. Kokoro glanced from her thumb to Tsume, and then to the four ninken. “Oh.” She pointed the scalpel at Tsume, who quickly settled the ninken as they growled again in warning. Kokoro still didn’t smell happy. “What happened to _you_? Where’ve you been this entire time?”

“Well, Grandmother took me on a mission, just like I wrote in my letter, but we were attacked by Iwa nin. We got separated – I guess Grandmother thought… or hoped… I was killed. I wasn’t. They were trying to get me to join their side because they figured an Inuzuka nose was a great thing to have, and then Danzo found and rescued me, and then we found and rescued Kushina, and now we’re both back.” Tsume tried to give Kokoro a brave smile, but she couldn’t hide her nervousness. Of all the people she would have to tell this story to, Kokoro was the one most likely to detect lies.

“Bullshit.”

…Yup, there was Kokoro, detecting the lie immediately. How come no one ever thought of the implications of telling a lie to a Mitarashi? It was like the entire clan had a sixth sense for untruths. Kokoro placed the scalpel into the pile of completed sharpening, and selected a pair of surgical scissors next. She didn’t bother looking at Tsume.

“What _really_ happened?” Her eyebrows, the same shade of dark purple as her hair, swooped low in a frown.

Tsume hunched her shoulders. “That _is_ what happened,” she mumbled, feeling miserable as she edged further back from Kokoro. At least everything after the part where Danzo rescued her was the absolute truth. She wanted to look at the floor, at the ninken, at anywhere else but the flashing steel in Kokoro’s quick hands, but she had learned her lesson the last time she turned her gaze away from someone who didn’t seem pleased with her safe return – Tsume was running out of working limbs.

“Sounds less of a _can’t_ and more like a _won’t_ , to me.”

Tsume curled her left arm around her right. Shikake’s numbing agent was beginning to wear off, and she could feel a dull throb in her entire left arm. “I’m sorry, Kokoro-chan. I… please don’t be mad at _me_.”

Kokoro’s hands stilled. “I’m not mad,” Kokoro whispered as she opened and closed the scissors. “I’m… I don’t know what I am.”

“Well, you’re _not happy_ to see me.” Tsume had believed that everyone – except Grandmother, definitely – would be happy to see Tsume back. Granted, it was an unexpected bonus that her sire and Oyubi had both been overjoyed to see her return, but it stung that Kokoro didn’t share in the joy. In the end, Kokoro mattered more to Tsume than Shikake, because Kokoro had been there more for Tsume than what she ever remembered of Shikake.

“I bet you had a lot of fun,” Kokoro said with a bitter voice, her odor suddenly flaring with guilt and shame, staring down at the weapons in her lap, “ _gallivanting_ around the continent, off on your own adventures and not caring about the rest of us back at home. We were nearly sick to death with worry!”

Tsume hunched her shoulders more, her chin brushing her chest.

“And then you waltz back in like nothing ever happened, and expect me to be all happy for you. It must be nice to come _walking_ in, and give me a bald-faced _lie_. And wow, you even got to rescue Kushina, while I was stuck here in a cot and wondering if I’d ever see _her_ again, if I’d ever be useful to anyone. I bet everyone’s just glad that you’re back, lining up around the block to see how you’re doing. And I suppose you expect me to be the same. You Inuzuka always have to be the center of attention.”

“Kokoro—”

“Go away!” Kokoro flung the scissors. Tsume ducked just in time to avoid an impromptu haircut.

“Hey!” declared the Jomae nin indignantly as he caught the scissors in mid-air. “No spontaneous-thrown pointy objects! You’re giving me unhealthy flashbacks to yesterday!”

Kokoro flung her pillow at Tsume. Shi snatched it and shook it ferociously. “I don’t _want_ you back!” The pillow burst into a cloud of feathers around Shi’s maw. A shouting med nin approached the adolescents as Ichi crouched and growled in warning.

Tsume snagged the back of Ichi’s scruff with her left hand, chakra tightening her muscles as she planted her feet against the ground to prevent him from lunging at Kokoro. “OUT! NOW!” She manhandled Ichi alongside her, stitches tearing as the other ninken followed. Oh man, Danzo was going to have her head for not controlling Grandmother’s ninken in an infirmary tent. Tsume fled as her eyes stung. She nearly tore the entrance flaps off as she ripped through them, batting at the material with her cast, numb to the physical pain as her emotional pain from Kokoro’s rejection crushed her from the inside out, and her other arm throbbing with using chakra-infused strength to control Ichi.

Sakumo was there, his arms around Tsume to draw her into the shadows beside the tent. The two samurai watched Tsume with sympathetic expressions.

“What did I do wrong?” Tsume asked Sakumo as she released Ichi and surrendered herself at Sakumo, her stitched arm leaving a smear of fresh blood against his sleeve. Her eyes still stung, but she wasn’t going to cry. She just _wasn’t_. Because Kokoro didn’t smell of hate (bitterness, anger – _so much like Grandmother_ – and guilt, but not hate), so Tsume just surprised Kokoro – that had to be it. It wasn’t every day that your friend came back from the dead, right, especially surrounded by Grandmother’s ninken. “I’ll just give her some space,” she mumbled as Sakumo forced her to sit beside Kushina. The adrenaline of intervening with battle-hardened, mature ninken was starting to wear off, and she felt her hands shaking. The physical pain was making itself known, now. “That’s what she needs right now. It’s space.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Sakumo said as he gently pulled her sleeve back to inspect the torn stitches. He clicked his tongue and rolled back the sleeve, revealing the gaping lacerations. “We’ll have to go back to your dad, here.”

Tsume shook her head as the four nin surrounded her. San pressed in between Kushina and Tsume, Ichi flopped at her feet, Shi sat at her back, and Ni stood on the side opposite of Kushina. “No, don’t talk to Kokoro. You’ll only make her feel worse, and she already smelled of guilt and shame.”

Sakumo sighed and ran one hand through his hand as he pressed Oyubi’s sleeve against the bleeding. “What did she say?” Kushina wove her arm around San and wrapped a comforting hand around Tsume’s cast.

“She’s just mad,” Tsume said again, drawing her knees up to her chest. “But I’m sure she’ll come around. Really. She… she probably just feels like she’s being left behind, because she was mad at me walking in, she was mad that I was able to help rescue Kushina. She’s mad that she can’t do what I’m able to do.” Her simple belief in her friends was all that she had to cling to in the brothel; she was going to cling to it in the broad daylight of Orochimaru’s camp.


	18. Alpha Years - Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the classic Girl Meets Horse, Girl Falls in Love With Horse. (Also, Danzo Meets Horse; Danzo Falls into Hate With Horse.)
> 
> It has been a long time since this author has ridden a horse. I never thought I would wind up researching horses and their equipment. Percheron horses are actually a French battle horse. So, if you're wondering what Juubi looks like, there you go.

Kokoro refused to talk to Tsume or about Tsume, Kushina later reported the next day as she and Tsume lined up outside the supplies wagon. As (somewhat) functioning genin, they were in charge of stocking their own supplies as the wounded train prepped for its journey back to Konoha. It was a very long line because everyone was getting replenished in anticipation of Orochimaru’s marching orders. The camp was well on its way of packing up, and the sounds of construction filled the air as tents were dismantled, and wagons and sealing scrolls were filled.

Tsume scratched San on her shoulder blades, just beneath the leather strap. Ichi and San were quickly becoming her favorites of Grandmother’s ninken, because they were gentle, enduring, and friendly. On the other end of the spectrum was the steadfast Shi, who reluctantly obeyed and followed her three ninken companions more than she did Tsume. Tsume hadn’t yet pegged Ni into a category, but was willing to be as patient with him as he was with her. “Did she say why?”

Kushina shook her head. “I didn’t ask. But I get the feeling it’s because Kokoro thinks she’s going to lose everyone now that you’re back, that she’s going to be left behind since she’s paralyzed.”

Tsume could sympathize with that. She had felt left behind and useless when Danzo criticized her stamina and made Minato carry her for two days. “Does she have to stop being a kunoichi?” Tsume asked. She knew of lots of people who had lost body parts or functions, but were still really awesome ninja staying in the field of action – like Danzo with his one eye, or her older cousin Megumi, who had lost her dominant arm when fighting Kumo nin two years ago.

“Sakumo said that Kokoro could probably join the T&I or cryptology with her brothers.”

“But that would mean we can’t be a team anymore.”

Kushina fluffed her red hair. It shone with highlights of gold beneath the warm autumn sun. Tsume wanted to run her fingers through the silky strands, but didn’t dare move her arms much after Shikake’s lecture while he redid 30% of her stitches. And then he lectured the ninken on keeping their new mistress safe. “It’s hard to get out in the field when you don’t have a functioning pair of legs.” Not a cloud disturbed the sky or a breeze stirred through the camp. It felt like it was going to be a hot and dry day – strangely unseasonable for the year. Tsume kept expecting snow and cold, although such would be unfavorable for their traveling wagon train.

Tsume studied the backs of her ninken. An Inuzuka cousin, Fuuko, had tracked Tsume down late last night. Fuuko, a beta, openly acknowledged Tsume as clan alpha head, and presented Tsume a gift – two sets of leather and silver harnesses and tack for the ninken. Fuuko showed Sakumo and Kushina how to put the harnesses on San so they could carry Tsume’s supplies, and they demonstrated their lesson on Ichi. San and Ichi were both currently rigged in the harnesses and looking resigned with their fates as impromptu pack mules.

An idea was forming in Tsume’s mind as she compared the height and strength of the four ninken. Both of her arms throbbed in dull and stinging agony, even despite the anti-inflammatories that Shikake had given her at breakfast and the numbing unguent he had smeared all over her lacerations again. The pain made it difficult to think, and she didn’t want to look like an idiot, especially in front of Kushina or the surrounding shinobi and kunoichi. “But what if she _could_ get out in the field?” Tsume asked.

“How? She’s gotta be able to move with her legs to dodge attacks. Kokoro-chan can’t carry herself around on her arms, and she needs her hands free anyway to attack.”

Tsume studied Ni’s back; Ni was the smallest of the ninken (but not by much), and could be very menacing with the right incentive and command – or if she didn’t like the person, no command needed. Grandmother’s ninken still had a good ten years of life and service remaining that made them viable in the field; after that, they would slowly be phased out of field service and would become mentors for younger Inuzuka and their ninken puppies. “The Suna nin use chakra strings to guide and control puppets. What if Kokoro could use chakra strings to guide and control a wheelchair?”

Kushina frowned in thought as she stood on her tiptoes to see past the line of front of them. She rocked back on her heels. “Still got a while to go.” Then she added, “I don’t know how that would work. If we have to travel through the woods, the wheelchair would get hung up on branches and stuff. I think Kokoro-chan has the potential for chakra control like that, but does she have the stamina to do it all the time? _I_ could, but I don’t think she could.”

Tsume compared the height and strength of all four ninken, and considered Kokoro’s physical abilities. Her idea could pan out successfully, but she wouldn’t be able to present the idea directly to Kokoro, because Kokoro would probably react with refusal, especially if she felt that Tsume was offering out of pity. Besides, the ninken weren’t trained with what she was plotting, and it wasn’t a good idea to throw someone who wasn’t an Inuzuka into the mix just yet.

Tsume silently mulled over the idea as the line slowly inched forward. When the sun reached its zenith in the sky, they finally reached the end of the line.

“Uzumaki Kushina, genin on Konoha’s Team Five, led by Hatake Sakumo-sensei.” The supply master barely glanced at Kushina’s forehead protector before handing her a small bundle of weapons. Kushina looked expectedly at Tsume as she stepped forward. The supply master wordlessly eyed her arms, and then the ninken.

“Inuzuka Tsume, genin of Konoha’s Team Five, led by Hatake Sakumo-sensei.” Tsume gestured to Kushina. “I’m her teammate.”

“Really?” The supply master’s forehead protector indicated that he was from Hoshigakure. “I know Hatake’s team since they’ve run my supplies, and this is the first I’ve ever met or heard of you.” The supply master waved Kushina’s loud protests away. “Regardless, I _also_ know Inuzuka Shinzou’s ninken, and I ain’t dumb enough to doubt the word of an Inuzuka when _those_ are hanging with her. Here.” He extended another small bundle forward.

Tsume gestured San close. “She’ll carry my bundle.”

The supply master shook his head. “If you can’t use the weapons yourself, then I will issue them to someone who can.” He eyed her arms again.

Ignoring the stiffness, the pain, and the odd stinging pinch from the stitches, Tsume reached with her left arm. She pinched the sealing scroll with two dozen blast tags in the crook of her elbow. “I got like this because I didn’t have weapons,” she grumbled. “I’m _not_ getting shorted like that again.” If she had kept her kunai, she could’ve stabbed the Kumo nin in the base of his skull instead of ripping his spine out with her bare hand.

Tsume waited until she, Kushina, and the ninken were out of sight of the supply master. Tsume dropped the heavy bundle of kunai and sealing scroll on the ground and groaned in pain. “Take it,” she told San, trying to will away the increased throbbing agony. The throb ignored Tsume’s will.

Kushina’s lips pressed together in worry. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” she asked with concern as San grabbed the bundle with her teeth. “Maybe you should ride in one of the wagons, instead of being part of the active guard with me and Sakumo-sensei.”

Tsume studied Ichi; he was the tallest and strongest of the ninken – she thought she could remember Grandmother saying once that Ichi’s stamina was also the best, which was why he was number one. “No,” she told Kushina firmly. She still chafed with the memory of being carried by Mooncalf, too weak and too barefooted to carry her own weight. “I’m _not_ a worthless meat shield.”

Kushina’s face fell. “I never thought that, Tsume-chan. I just don’t want you bumping your arms or getting hurt more. If you can’t even carry your weapons, then how are you going to fight?”

“Because there’s more to being armed than just having a sharp blade,” Tsume replied, just before ordering Ichi to hold still. “If my arms are broken, I’ll kick my enemy to death. If my legs are broken, I’ll rip out the throat of my enemy with my bare teeth.” All those days of riding Danzo and Minato had to be good for something – Jiraiya had said that every opportunity should be used for training, and Danzo had implied that anything could be a weapon. She swung a leg over his back. She hopped a few times on her other leg as she grappled with the harness with her right hand. When she managed to secure her cast within a loop, she mounted completely. Ichi widened his stance and braced himself while Tsume centered herself on his back.

Kushina whistled. “You’re going to ride your ninken like the samurai ride their horses? That might work, but how are you going to hold on without your arms?”

Tsume squeezed her knees tighter together, and twisted her right hand until the loop was secure around the cast. She then released the pressure from her knees, and nudged Ichi forward. She nearly slid off his back before she remembered to tighten her knees again. And that pulled her arm painfully. Oh, this wasn’t going to work so well after all. She needed a way to keep her butt secure… Oh. “You know how we tree-climb by channeling the chakra to our feet to stick us to the wood?” she asked Kushina as a smile spread across her face.

Kushina grinned back at Tsume’s smile. “You’re scheming again, aren’t you? What kind of trouble are we going to get into this time?”

“How much trouble can I get into if I’m going to be sitting the entire time?” Tsume asked. Then she banged her heels against Ichi’s side like he was a horse or Mooncalf. “Charge!” Ichi’s first few leaping bounds were slow before he adjusted to Tsume’s weight accordingly, and gained momentum. Paws scrambling against the hardpacked soil and ears laid back, he was silent as he charged through the camp. Tsume bounced forward and braced herself with her left arm, ignoring the throb of pain. She giggled as the wind swept her wild hair out of her face.

Ichi was swift and graceful on his feet, effortlessly dodging the moving crowds of people. His angles were sharp and smooth, and nearly unseated Tsume even with the chakra she used. She heard the other ninken following, and Kushina’s shout of surprise and pounding footsteps. Ichi was fairly easy to guide once Tsume managed to communicate that he was supposed to go with strategic tugs with his scruff.

She ignored the yells of other shinobi as they scattered out of the way, most of them aware of how the ninken were not mere canines to be trifled with. And then someone deliberately stepped in to their path with too little warning, his glare dark enough to blot out the overhead sun. Tsume yanked back on Ichi’s scruff. “Whoa! Whoa! _Stop_!”

They collided with Danzo.

Ni and Shi were instantly attacking Danzo, bared fangs snapping at his throat and belly. Ichi backpedaled from Danzo, his claws leaving deep tracks in the ground as he reversed momentum to remove Tsume from immediate danger. San imposed herself between Ichi and Danzo, her body turned wide to present a larger target as her ears went flat and the fur stood on end at her shoulders. Danzo moved too quickly for Tsume to see – one moment he had a bloody wrist caught in Ni’s maw while he flipped Shi away from his throat, the next he became a nearby wooden tent stake that shattered into wooden splinters between Ni’s teeth.

It bought Danzo only a second of time in distracting two experienced ninken.

It was the only second Tsume needed to yell her ninken into submission. The three ninken closed ranks around her and Ichi, their hair standing on end in warning to Danzo. Danzo, outside the reach of the ninken, stood tall and strong as he rubbed his chin and silently considered Tsume with a look that made Tsume’s hair also rise on end, but for an entirely different reason.

Kushina finally reached Tsume, weighed down by her bundle, and the bundle that San dropped to attack Danzo. She stopped beside Danzo and doubled over for a moment, gasping for breath. Then Kushina straightened upward and yelled. “What were you _thinking_? You can’t just barge through camp like that – you might run into someone, believe it!” Then her voice squeaked into a fearful silence when she realized that Danzo stood in front of them.

Tsume rubbed her nose with her left hand, feeling brand new pain flare with every movement in both arms. “Too late,” she mumbled. She had wrenched her right arm when Ichi collided with Danzo, even though she didn’t lose her seat, and now it hurt more than her left arm. At least her stitches were still intact.

“How,” began Danzo, his voice as flat as his eyes, even though his scent was delighted, “did you manage to remain seated on your ninken even though both of your arms are incapacitated?”

Tsume hunched down, feeling awkward and small as the surrounding strangers and Kushina stared at her. She felt even smaller as she was surrounded by the four ninken, and really hoped that her recent growth spurt would continue. “I made myself stick with chakra,” she finally admitted.

Danzo squeezed his eye shut in exasperation and pinched the bridge of his nose. “ _Stick_? You’re channeling chakra to your…”

“Butt. Yeah. So, I figured that if I could use chakra to stick to a tree or a building with my feet, then I could stick to Ichi in kinda the same way. It’s easier channeling the chakra to my butt than my feet, actually. Feels weirder, though” Tsume rubbed her nose, secretly pleased that _this_ could work, and also somewhat embarrassed to be discussing her backside with Danzo, in front of a curious crowd.

Danzo glanced sideways at Kushina, who had clapped a hand over her mouth and trying not to laugh. He then inspected his wrist, which was circled with raised bloody welts. Tsume stared, half in awe and half wary that Danzo managed to escape two attacking ninken with a single minor injury. Ni was trying to spit out wooden splinters, sliding his tongue against his teeth.

“Why do you have two bundles of weapons?” Danzo asked Kushina.

“Er. One’s for me and the other for Tsume.”

“I didn’t want to be unarmed! I’m tired of not having any weapons.”

He snorted in derision. “You can hardly be unarmed with your grandmother’s ninken.” He looked pointedly at his wrist again. “They would’ve had me too, if I wasn’t experienced with sparring with Oyubi-san. They appear to be listening to you now.”

They listened to her…. _sometimes_ , but she wasn’t going to explain that distinction to Danzo _,_ and she still couldn’t tell what the ninken were saying. She ought to teach the ninken to talk with human speech; that way, other people would be able to understand them. Like Kokoro. Every ninken _could_ communicate. Communication consisted of a variety of body language, different vocalization, and a deliberate shift in scents. It was like a code though, and Tsume hadn’t yet Grandmother’s code; the ninken were still testing her bounds as alpha. “We’re getting along,” Tsume said carefully.

Danzo studied her like she was a bizarre bug again. It was the same sort of expression he used when they first met, and back at the aspen copse the morning he learned she could detect the scent of the Hokage from over eight hundred kilometers away. It thrilled Tsume as much as it made her wary.

“But,” Danzo began, his voice almost amused, “the question would be why you obtained a bundle of weapons if you’re supposed to be traveling in a wagon with the other wounded?”

Tsume crossed her arms, trying to appear that she wasn’t in any pain and was only slightly hindered. She swung her legs free but still maintained her seat. “Just because I’m wounded doesn’t mean I’m useless.” Besides, Sakumo told her this morning that she could accompany Kushina on foot, and serve as a lookout, as long as she stayed out of the fray.

“Both of your arms are currently incapacitated.”

Tsume frowned. She didn’t know what games Danzo was playing – he wanted something from her, and she kinda didn’t want to give him anything with the way he had talked and acted to her ever since they met up with Kushina and the others. She didn’t think it was fair that he only sought her out when he wanted something; she was tired of being used. But at least he didn’t seem so mad at her after Orochimaru benched him. Either that, or he decided to get even instead of staying mad, because she’d bet one of Grandmother’s ninken (probably Ni, since she liked Ni the least) that Danzo was going to do something that Orochimaru wouldn’t like. “Someone,” she said, lifting her nose in the air, “once told me that even if both my arms stopped working, I could still kill a man with my feet.”

A smile spread across Danzo’s face. Kushina recoiled from Danzo as her face went white, clutching the bundles of weapons close to her chest. “Indeed,” he whispered, his voice sounding almost like a purr. “And you don’t need working arms for your nose to be of assistance.” He crooked a finger at her. “With me, all six of you. I want you to meet the samurai commanders.”

Kushina waited until Tsume and the four ninken were between her and Danzo before following after. Her pores were drenched with fear. “I don’t like it when he smiles,” she whispered to Tsume. “It’s not a very nice smile, like Sakumo-sensei’s.”

Tsume shrugged, and leaned back with her mouth shielded from Danzo so he wouldn’t overhear. “That’s because he probably doesn’t know how to smile and has to practice in front of a mirror.”

Kushina giggled at that, but it was a nervous giggle – fear still drowned out all other emotions. “I thought for sure that he’d blow his top at you for running through the camp.”

“Yeah, me too.”

They reluctantly followed Danzo as he limped into a tent that no one had yet started to dismantle. The entrance was guarded by two samurai armed with long lances. Tsume stared boldly, wondering how a person could fight with such a big, clumsy weapon. The samurai stepped away as Danzo braced the tent flap open with his arm and gestured the two girls and four ninken through. Tsume blinked her eyes at the darkness that a single candle barely penetrated, unable to see after spending most of the day outside in the bright sunlight. Danzo followed behind and let the flap drop close behind him.

Kushina quickly squeezed in between the ninken so that she was close to Tsume, careful to ensure that Ni and San was situated her and Danzo.

“This,” Danzo declared, stepping to the front where Tsume could see two dark lumps that constituted as persons (middle-aged male samurai per her nose, not that Tsume had seen any the female samurai that Sakumo had told her of, as he proudly explained that samurai blood ran through the veins of his clan), “is Inuzuka Shinzou’s great-granddaughter, Tsume, alpha head of the clan upon Shinzou’s death. And this is Uzumaki Mito’s _heir_ , Uzumaki Kushina.”

Tsume channeled chakra into her eyes to help them adjust more quickly. The two middle-aged lumps were in full armor. The first was clean shaven with grey-streaked dark hair, and he knelt on a mat with some maps spread before him on the ground. The second, kneeling just behind the first, was slightly younger with his light brown hair unmarked by any gray, and a curling mustache that was surprisingly red.

The first samurai smiled in greeting and nodded his head. Tsume quickly copied Kushina’s deep bow from the waist, and then sneezed when Ichi’s fur tickled her nose.

“This,” Danzo continued, turning to the girls, “is Mifune-dono, general of the Samurai Armies from the Land of Iron. His men will be assisting the wagon train to Konoha.” It seemed strange that Danzo would look hard at Kushina as he said that. Tsume couldn’t help but feel that the samurai knew something about Kushina that she didn’t – something about why it was so important to get Kushina back when Kumo had abducted her.

Tsume couldn’t smell anything suspicious at the moment, but she knew when something stunk.

“My condolences for the loss of your great-grandmother,” Mifune said, inclining his head to Tsume once more. “I have known of her since my youth, and she was a very strong, very admirable woman. Well do I recall her and her sister – the legendary Hell Hounds. My grandfather was pleased when the Inuzuka clan joined Konohagakure, since it meant they would no longer terrorize the Land of Iron. This was also a great disappointment for young samurai, like myself, who never got to face any Inuzuka women wearing traditional battle garb.”

Tsume shifted in her seat, feeling uncomfortable to hear someone say something kind and complementary about Grandmother when she had taken perverse delight with Grandmother’s limp body getting tossed onto the funeral pyres last night. “Thank you,” she said finally, not meaning it, after Kushina pointedly nudged her in the ribs.

Mifune turned to Kushina. “And it is my honor to meet Mito-san’s heir. She was also a very strong, admirable woman of many rare talents.” Mifune grinned. “It is a small wonder that their heirs would be friends – no doubt it was meant to be.” He looked up to Danzo. “But you didn’t tell me that Inuzuka-san was a young child with injuries when we discussed scouts.”

“Why should I? Youth or age isn’t a factor with shinobi. She’s the only Inuzuka accompanying the wounded train, because she’s the only Inuzuka wounded enough that we can force to go to the Konoha hospital. She’s too useful to be kept stationary. Her safety won’t be a factor when she’s guarded by four battle-hardened ninken, especially in riding them like your men ride horses. Not only will she be able to track, but she can also swiftly carry messages and reports back to the train.”

Mifune studied Tsume for a moment. She wondered if she should’ve raided Grandmother’s supplies for her face paints so she could finally wear her clan markings appropriately. She straightened and tried to look regal and, uh, clan-head-like (kinda how she saw the Hyuuga sometimes). Then she decided not to, because she didn’t like the idea of looking constipated.

“Shimura-san has informed me that your olfaction is very strong for one of your age.”

Tsume nodded, remembering with a cringe the lecture that Danzo had given her and the others last week at the cave, of the importance of not disclosing the true strength of her olfaction.

“Shimura-san has proposed that you be allowed to join him as a forward scout, to ensure that our path is free of danger, or to warn us of possible attacks or ambushes.”

Oh. Tsume eyed Danzo, who kept his expression unreadable. On one hand, she _would_ be a lot more useful sniffing out for possible ambushes, traps, and attacks – she really did have an awesome nose, after all, no matter how useless Grandmother might’ve (but most probably) thought of Tsume before dying – and she’d be able to _show_ Sakumo how riding her ninken would be an awesome solution for Kokoro without saying a word.

On the other hand, she’d be left alone with Danzo.

She wasn’t scared of Danzo – it just seemed weird that he would propose such a thing, after what he said and did (or rather didn’t do, the butthead) ever since they met up with Minato and Kushina. “Sure. But do you think it would be okay with Sakumo-sensei?”

Danzo shrugged. “He didn’t raise any protests when I told him of the possibility an hour ago.”

Possibility didn’t exactly equal permission, did it? Tsume thought for a second longer, and then shrugged. Shinobi Rule #35 (snuffed out jasmine-scented candles): Unspoken commands are equally important to spoken commands. “So what am I going to need for tracking? A water canteen? Some snacks?”

oOoOoOo

Getting a wagon train together with a combined number of wounded ninja, samurai, wagons, draft horses for pulling the wagons and war horses for fighting, supplies, medics, and other support staff was a logistical nightmare that made Tsume’s head swim whenever Kushina or Sakumo attempted to explain the situation.

Danzo, naturally, was in the thick of planning and directing. Having been one of the commanders with the war and responsible for the cleanup in Wind, he was experienced with herding confused and directionally-challenged groups in the right direction, and thrived on ordering other people around. He seemed everywhere at once – one minute talking to the different guards about rotating shifts, the next speaking to suppliers about medicines, bandages, and food, and then in a blink of an eye wading into the fore to physically separate squabbling nin of opposite Villages getting into fisticuffs. Sakumo always followed Danzo’s limping footsteps, making mental notes of what duties and positions were being assigned to whom (and to lend a hand when it came to breaking up fights). As the appointed head of the shinobi guard (most of which was made up of only mildly-injured shinobi and uninjured genin), Sakumo was responsible for coordinating and rotating shifts of shinobi and samurai.

Kushina was kept busy distributing required supplies to each wagon – necessary medical supplies, fluids, snacks, and weapons – carefully following the detailed list provided by the med nin with nut-brown skin. Tsume eventually learned (and remembered) that the med nin’s name was Tenkasu Kyou. 

Tsume did her best to stay out of the way. She couldn’t help Kushina or the others with stocking or distributing supplies because that required the use of her arms, Kokoro-chan still wasn’t talking to her, and transferring wounded people into wagons so they would all be packed and ready to go first thing early next morning was a very loud, only slightly organized chaos. It didn’t help that she couldn’t remember most of the instructions that were initially given to her, since the surrounding racket was distracting and interfered with her ability to concentrate on her remembering skills.

She eventually just settled for sitting beneath the covered wagon Kokoro was parked in. She was surrounded by her four ninken, out of the way, but still able to marvel at the chaos and how people seemed to know where they belonged. She wished that she had that level of confidence and that much attention span.

Tsume smelled Orochimaru – and only him, as he strangely lacked scents from casual contact with other people and the environment – just before he slithered under the wagon beside her. The ninken didn’t glance, snarl, growl, or raise their hackles at his presence. She figured that was a good sign.

“I wondered why Tsume-chan hasn’t been to see me,” Orochimaru began as he rested sideways on the ground. He supported his upper body with one arm propping him upward. Tsume glanced sideways at him, and thought she could feel the after sensation of teeth nipping her toe; let a guy sink his teeth into your toe once, and he suddenly got a lot more casual. “Imagine my surprise that Danzo-kun actually removed you from the brothel. That’s very unlike him to consider the wellbeing of another person, and I had told you to stay there for years.”

Tsume decided that ignorance was the best defense. “I don’t remember that. I just remember being told that I was supposed to get the information of enemy forces, and then pass it on to the next person.”

Orochimaru’s eyes glimmered gold in the shade. “Indeed. Well, at least you were successful in that regard. I suppose it was all for the best that you have returned, since you inherit the clan head with the death of your sister and great-grandmother.” There was a sibilant inflection in his words. “How very fortunate for you.”

Tsume didn’t want to think of being a clan head and ordering the adult Inuzuka women around, and the training that Hidarime had received but she didn’t, and how the effects of her traumatic brain injury was going to influence her decisions and people’s reactions. _One step at a time_ , she told herself before dismissing her worries from her mind. She still had time to learn, and her sire had promised assistance with anything she needed. She bet that Shikake knew about running a clan – and Aunt Natsumi and Aunt Bashira and Oyubi wouldn’t let her flounder. “I thought you left with the main forces.”

“I did. This is just a kage bunshin.” Oh, well, that probably explained why he smelled rather sterile. Except… didn’t kage bunshin feel like real people with their chakra? This chakra was weird. “How are you feeling?” One of his hands brushed against hers, and he sounded like he genuinely cared. Tsume looked at him again, and blinked when an image of Grandmother superimposed over his face, eyes blank and scent disappointed and resigned.

She felt the prickling of her hair stirring on the back of her neck, and didn’t know what the sensation meant or why she was feeling it. “Are you mad at me?” she blurted. He didn’t smell mad, but she had been expecting it, given how things went down between him and Danzo.

Orochimaru studied her, blinking languidly like… like a cat, sitting upon a rock in the sun, quietly watching a near-by fluttering bird and waiting for the right moment to pounce. The smile that spread across his face was like a seeping blot of ink. “No, I’m not mad at you. After all, I cannot expect a twelve year old simpleton to be the mastermind behind the manipulation of certain events that better her fortunes.”

Tsume scratched Shi behind his ears. “I’m… sorry? I didn’t mean to. That, um, sounds way too complicated for me.” She smelled jealously, thick and pungent, permeating the air. Orochimaru’s scent remained sterile, though. She studied her ninken once again, who remained relaxed and sleepy.

Orochimaru rolled onto his back, his long hair pooling around his head on the ground. He was silent for a moment as he stared up at the wagon slots overhead. Feeling unusually bold, Tsume pinched a lock of his hair between the fingers of her left hand – yup, his hair was as sleek and smooth as Kushina’s. She was instantly envious. “Who tinkered with your seal?” Orochimaru asked without looking at her.

Tsume concentrated on touching his hair. The strands were fine and thin, entirely unlike the stiff, wiry texture of her own hair. She bet Orochimaru never looked like a rabid hedgehog on his bad hair days. Then she wondered if he even _had_ bad hair days, the lucky bastard. “Dunno. I passed out from chakra exhaustion after yanking the spine out of a Kumo nin, and when I woke up, they said it was all fixed.”

“Ah. Jiraiya tinkered with it, then. Tell me – did he touch you?” 

Tsume felt cold revulsion settle in the pit of her stomach – she remembering Jiraiya’s naked chest hovering over her when she awoke in the cave. She watched wordlessly as Orochimaru’s hair slid through her fingers like water as he sat upright and leaned close. His breath stirred against her cheek – he didn’t smell like he had eaten or drank anything for _weeks_. “He did, didn’t he?” Orochimaru’s voice was soft and teasing. “I’m sure that his hands slid all over your body as the seal seized his senses. He probably couldn’t get enough of you, stroking and petting you like the delicious little whore that you are. Tell me – did you enjoy seducing Danzo-kun? Did you love the way he took you on the same mattress you’ve shared with so many other men?”

Her hand trembled as she decided to draw her fingers through Shi’s thick fur. None of the ninken were bothered by Orochimaru’s close presence. He was the only man whom they didn’t express any warning towards touching their new alpha mistress. And the odor of jealousy… it was coming from beyond Orochimaru. Beyond where, though?

Orochimaru circled around her, the warmth of his body radiating against hers. “Did it excite Danzo to bury himself hilt-deep in sloppy seconds?”

“I don’t know.” Something wasn’t right. Something was dreadfully wrong.

“And did you ride him while Jiraiya watched, or did they take you both at once before they tampered with your seal?”

Tsume took a deep breath, and concentrated a moment on what her nose whispered, instead of what her heart screamed. The realization only made her heart scream even more. She pulled her hand away from Shi, and faced Orochimaru. “I’d tell you to ask them yourself, but you’re nothing but a fake. Kai!” Orochimaru’s face rippled for a moment, and then shattered as the genjutsu collapsed on itself. Tsume stared at the space where the illusion had been, and then pulled her knees up to her chest.

Aunt Bashira told her, perhaps a year after her brain injury happened, that the Inuzuka clan’s olfaction was most famously used for tracking, but it was as easily useful for breaking illusions. _(“Genjutsu is successful because humans are visual creatures who rely heavily on the reality that our eyes give us. The Hyuuga and the Uchiha clans rarely fall for illusions, and that’s because they can see the chakra constructing the genjutsu. The Aburame clan’s insects see the world through inhuman eyes, and entire colonies pass such information to the Aburame. We use our noses, so we don’t need to **see** through genjutsu, no matter how they might play around with the rest of our mind. No illusion in the world can recreate all the different scents of reality. And if you’ve got a really good nose, Tsume-chan, you can even catch the scent of the genjutsu’s caster.”) _

Tsume was all too aware of her limitations as a kunoichi. Her poor short-term memory meant that learning and memorizing jutsu were always going to be a monumental task; her genjutsu was lousy, her ninjutsu was horrid, and her taijutsu was sloppy – okay, deadly, she reconsidered as she remembered what ripping out a man’s spine sounded like. Her chakra control varied from really good to really lousy, depending on her eagerness and how well she remembered not to overextend her limits.

Despite all of that, she had the best nose. It never lied to her, even if it took several moments for Tsume to realize that Orochimaru’s lack of environmental scents was due to the genjutsu caster not knowing how everyone – humans, animals, inanimate objects alike – soaked up surrounding particles with their hair, skin, breath, and clothes, or how human emotions had odors. At least she could smell the odors of human emotions. Even a shadow clone would’ve been saturated with the environmental scents.

And Aunt Bashira was right – chakra, especially when used in a genjutsu, _did_ have the same scent as the person using it.

The odor of jealousy still pervaded her environment.

Tsume was suddenly so painfully grateful that Danzo was getting her away from the wagon train during the daytime for tracking, because she didn’t _want_ to know what Kokoro-chan meant to do when she aimed that genjutsu on Tsume. Tsume hoped that the genjutsu just plucked surface worries from her mind, because she didn’t know how else Kokoro would’ve obtained such information of Tsume’s S-class mission or her seal.

Her current place under the wagon originally seemed a good place to spend the night. Sakumo knew where she was; Danzo didn’t care, as long as she stayed out from underfoot, and the underside of the covered wagon had literally been just that. But this area clearly put her too close to Kokoro, and she didn’t want to be on the receiving end of another cruel genjutsu.

Maybe if she stayed away from Kokoro, maybe that would make things better. “Not that it worked for Grandmother,” she told Ichi as she stuck her supplies back into the packs secured to San’s harness. “I just don’t know what to do.” She couldn’t tell Sakumo, because she didn’t want to force Sakumo to have to choose between which kunoichi he should side with, and Kokoro needed Sakumo’s support a little more than Tsume did.

She followed her nose to the small tent that Team Jiraiya shared, even though it was currently empty. After all, Tsume knew that she had more friends and support that Kokoro did. Minato wouldn’t care if he had to share his bedroll with her again. If he asked, she would tell him the truth… she felt like she was drowning, and needed him to toss her a lifeline.

oOoOoOo

The new day was promising to dawn bright and clear, and the wagon camp was ready to start forward just as soon as the draft horses were hitched. Danzo’s horse was gigantic, and his shiny coat, so dark a grey it was almost black, gleamed even in the dim light. The horse’s neck was thick and short, his legs tapering into a light feathering of longer hair. Tsume reached a hand out to pet the white forelock, and dodged the hoof that lashed out at her only because Ichi leapt out of the way. She kept her seat with judiciously-applied chakra.

“Good boy,” Tsume told Ichi with an approving scratch behind the ears.

Danzo glared over the horse’s back from the other side. “This is _not_ a pet, Tsume,” he said between gritted teeth. “This is a war horse, bred and trained for battle. He will kick your head in, and that would only cause another traumatic brain injury – or worsen the one you already have. Stay out of reach.”

Tsume hardly listened as she watched with excited admiration. Ichi was large, as far as ninken went, but _that_ was a _horse_ , magnificent even amongst the samurai battle horses – a pure Percheron, someone had nervously described the horse to Danzo as the man dumped the riding gear at Danzo’s feet, and then retreated in a haze of fear. She had only ever before seen horses up-close when ridden by the Fire Daimyo and his entourage whenever he visited the Hokage, but those horses seemed gangly and plain in her admittedly spotty memory. This horse’s mane – long, grey-black, and sleek just like his coat – was braided neatly and held in place with leather straps. Ichi, she told herself, was also sleek and beautiful, even if his tail wasn’t separated in ten individual braids weighted down with miniature spiked maces. (Tsume made a mental note to try hiding sharp objects in her hair, just in case an enemy ever tried to grab her there. She lost enough brushes and ties in her wild mane to know that this could be an amazingly successful defensive measure.)

Danzo swore under his breath and jammed his shoulder into the horse’s side. Then he smacked the horse’s nose as he attempted to bite Danzo. “Stop sucking air, you worthless cow!” Danzo pulled the cinch strap tighter after the horse maliciously farted.

“What’s his name?” Tsume asked.

“Damned if I know. His owner fell in battle and Mifune-dono said that I’m probably the only one with the _balls_ to mount him.”

Tsume had been there last night when Mifune spoke with Danzo. _(“Jiraiya-san himself advised me not to let you do any excess running or leaping to prevent further damage to your hamstring. Or you could get yourself to one of the healers. No? Then take the horse or be benched in a wagon. It’s your choice, Shimura-san.”)_ Danzo hadn’t been pleased with being forced to take a horse, and was even more displeased now that he was meeting the horse for the first time.

Tsume had fallen head over heels love at first sight; Danzo and the stallion just fell into mutually-shared hate.

Tsume would give just about anything to ride the horse, but she supposed the inability to feel fear wasn’t the same as having balls. She bet she’d stay mounted better than Danzo, though. She had been practicing lots with Ichi. “Can we call him Juubi?”

Danzo grunted as the horse clubbed him in the face with a toss of his head as Danzo attempted to put on the bridal and reigns. “Oh _hell_ no, we are _not_ naming him after any mythological ten-tailed demon.” Danzo swiped blood away from his newly split lip, and then braced himself. “ _That’s_ just an invitation for trouble.”

She thought that Juubi was a fine name for such a regal animal. “Does he even have a name?”

“Yeah – disobedient _cow._ ” Tsume decided that Juubi was a much more superior name than Disobedient Cow. Danzo’s naming skills were clearly as bad as his cooking skills. “Now, hold still.” Danzo mounted the horse. As he settled in the saddle, the horse’s ears went dangerously flat, and Tsume detected the warning shift – it was very much like her ninken.

“Hold on,” she suggested to Danzo with a sing-song voice.

He eyed her as he gathered the reigns in his hands. “What are – shit!” The horse reared up and twisted with an ear-splitting scream, slamming Danzo into a nearby fence post. Danzo threw up an arm to shield his head and back from Juubi’s lashing tail – the studded maces tore bloody strips from it.

Tsume remembered the genjutsu that her clan used on unruly puppies (and occasionally wild wolves, dogs, and angry men – or so Oyubi once hinted), and attempted to cast it on Juubi. It missed the horse, but Danzo swayed sideways in the saddle, blinked, and shook his head almost drunkenly. “Whaaaaat….?”

And then Sakumo was snatching Juubi’s harness, his voice soft and cajoling, in direct contrast to his strained biceps as he pulled tight to bring Juubi’s head under control. “Down, boy, down. That’s a good boy.” The stallion screamed in rage again as he reared up. Sakumo dangled in the air, legs kicking free, for a wild moment.

Danzo broke the genjutsu and glared at Tsume so hard that Ichi growled in warning. Danzo turned to Sakumo. “Give me the reins.”

“Would you like to consider a different horse?” Sakumo asked rapidly, his voice a near-whisper as the stallion dropped forward. He secured his feet firmly on the ground with chakra. “I think this one intends to kill you.”

Danzo growled as his eye flickered towards Tsume. “Not if my _teammate_ succeeds first. Give me the damn reigns. If he does manage to kill me, do me a favor and aim this creature at our enemies.” The horse bucked forward, ripping a piece of Sakumo’s arm off with his teeth and almost unseating Danzo at the same time.

Tsume quickly roamed through her pockets until she found the half-wilted carrot from breakfast that she had tucked away for a later snack. “Why not feed Juubi treats?” she asked, holding the carrot aloft. It limply flopped sideways in her hand – maybe she stuffed it in her pocket at dinner time last night? She really needed to reconsider her laundry and snack routines, but waved the carrot nonetheless. “Bribery always works with the dogs.” Cousin Shinchuu always said that the way through a man and a dog’s heart was through their stomachs. Tsume couldn’t see why the same wouldn’t also be true for enraged war horses.

“A carrot isn’t going to resolve this! And stop calling him Juubi – _fuck_!” Danzo swore several more times as the horse slammed sideways into another pole, crushing his left leg between solid wood and a ton of solid horse mass. Sakumo dug in his heels as the ground beneath his chakra-latch shattered. He yanked hard to bring the horse’s head under control, hands slick from the blood streaming from his arm.

“Oh, but he’s just romping. He’s got a playful side just like a dog!”

“Fuckingsonofabitch!” Danzo pushed himself _and_ Juubi away from the post with one arm. The wood splintered from the chakra-enhanced force he applied with his hand.

Tsume watched for several moments longer as two S-class Konoha nin got their butts kicked by a horse she would label as an alpha, and then decided it was probably best to retreat further backwards. She didn’t want to be underfoot, after all. She felt smug knowing that Ichi was responsive and obedient to _her_ , and she had three other ninken to act as attackers, so there, Danzo!

She found Kushina hanging out with Kokoro, both seated on the dropped tail of their covered wagon, their legs dangling free. “Where’s Sakumo-sensei?” Kushina asked. Kushina swung her legs; Kokoro’s legs looked like swollen noodles.

“He and Danzo are romping with Danzo’s new horse,” Tsume said. She studied Kushina and Kokoro for a moment. Kokoro bent forward and spread her arms wide to maintain her balance. Her movement also took up all the remaining free space on the wagon gate in an aggressive display of territorialism. Kushina glanced at Kokoro and then gave Tsume an apologetic shrug. Tsume shrugged back, not willing to force Kushina to decide between her and Kokoro.

“Minato was looking for you,” Kushina said suddenly as Tsume turned aside Ichi’s head.

“Mooncalf? What does he want?”

“Well, he saw me earlier to say goodbye.” Color stained Kushina’s cheeks red, but she smelled happy – not embarrassed. “He said… He said he liked my red hair.” She stroked said red hair absently as a silly smile crossed her face.

“Kushina-chan does have nice hair,” Tsume said, and decided that maybe Mooncalf wasn’t half-bad if he liked Kushina’s hair. Not that Tsume didn’t already like Minato, but this was just an added bonus. (She was a little put out with the fact that Minato had managed to steal Tsume’s blanket in the middle of the night, never mind the fact that he had his own. He looked like an egg roll when Tsume awoke, feeling chilled. She stole his pillow out of retaliation and snuggled up with Hotaru instead.) She nudged Ichi forward and followed her nose. Minato’s scent was cool and somewhat distant – still channeling nature chakra, or whatever it was called, she guessed – but she didn’t have any difficulty tracking him down. He and his genin teammates were waiting by one of the camp parameters, marked by the small red pole that jutted out of the ground. Minato and Hotaru stood straight, and Osamu crouched with his weight evenly distributed on his heels. They all turned and looked at her at once; they looked like a well-oiled machine, absolutely trusting one part to function and support the others.

“Hey, Kushina-chan said that you wanted to see me.”

Minato studied her silently for a moment, and then grinned. “Got used to riding someone after a few days on my back?” His bright blue eyes sparkled with mirth, and Tsume knew he was only trying to make her smile.

Remembering what the genjutsu-Orochimaru had said, Tsume decided it was best not to tell Minato that she had gotten used to riding _someone_ in the last four months, so why bother changing now? But Mooncalf and the others were like Kushina – innocent. Tsume wanted to protect that. Her answering smile was strained. “I guess. But they don’t smell as nicely as you do, so I’ll have to buy your brand of shampoo when we get back to Konoha.”

Minato’s smile dropped away. He shuffled his feet, looking shy and awkward as he scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, about that. I wanted to tell you… Look, Tsume, I just want you to know that the last week we’ve been together, with all that’s happened, I’m really glad you’re on our side. You know, Konohagakure’s.” She wasn’t used to seeing Minato appear so unsure of himself. “I thought you always played it up being tough in the Academy, with all your fighting and loud arguments. But, now, I know you _weren’t_ playing, and I don’t know if I could ever measure up to just how strong you really are. So it has been an honor to fight at your side, and I look forward to being your teammate in the future. Thank you.” He extended a fist out to Tsume. “Fist bump?” he asked with an uncertain expression.

Tsume eyed him. “It’s okay to be a Mooncalf with ridiculous dandelion hair. You don’t have to be tough, like me.” He had chased away the void when it was ready to consume her, and he did it with weapons fashioned from kindness and understanding. He was generous and congenial, especially when she desperately floundered in deep waters. _You know, the world would be a lot better off if there were more of you, Mooncalf._

Minato’s face scrunched up, but his fist remained extended. “Ridiculous d-dandelion hair?”

“Sure, why not?” She fist-bumped very carefully with her left hand. “Does this mean we’re friends?”

“We weren’t before?”

She punched him in the shoulder, forgetting to be careful, and then winced at the echo of pain in her arm. “Silly Mooncalf,” she said, pretending like that didn’t hurt. “I don’t willingly share my bed with people who aren’t my friends.”

His expression changed for just a blink – his eyes narrowed with a dark glint as his mouth shaped the word, _willingly_ – and then it morphed back, open and friendly. Tsume was almost unsure that his face had even changed, if not for the matching spike of anger in his scent. “I wish you the best of luck back to Konoha, and would ask that you look out for Kushina – don’t want her to get kidnapped again – but I know that you Inuzuka women tend to be overprotective and possessive.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “I guess that’s one of the reasons why I want to be friends with you.”

Tsume didn’t know what to say to that, not if he was on to what happened to her, so she punched him in the shoulder, this time in warning, and ruffled his hair. It was still fluffy and soft. “I can look out for both of us, no problem.”

He studied her for a moment. “And who’s going to look out for _you_?”

“My ninken. I can trust ‘em more than most people, even if they were Grandmother’s. And Sakumo-sensei, and Danzo – I know they won’t let anything bad happen to me, if they can help it.”

Minato solemnly nodded his head, as if confirming something to himself. “Good. Everyone needs someone to look out for them, and you’ve got the best. And may the Sage of Six Paths help you for putting up with Danzo – that alone takes a miracle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first time I posted this chapter, some of my readers were confused about Orochimaru's appearance and conversation with Tsume. I expanded the scene a little more, trying to convey that this isn't actually Orochimaru - it's actually Kokoro concocting a very odd genjutsu. 
> 
> Also, this is the last time Minato makes an appearance in the Alpha Years.


	19. Alpha Years - Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, yes, the infamous ravine scene. This is a brutal chapter, so brace yourselves.

The first two days of patrol were boring, filled either with Danzo’s stupid thoughtful silence or constant lectures with mind-aching exercises. If there was anything in life that Tsume could come close to hating, it was math and all of its stupid numbers. Distance was Danzo’s main priority in helping Tsume develop a sense for. It involved math that she thankfully was quite easily able to forget, pertaining to measurement of scent molecules across levels of distance, and the variables that could increase deterioration, such as temperature changes, rain, and wind. Tsume suspected that Danzo had gotten some of the training material from an Inuzuka cousin – probably Oyubi or Fuuko – so he could work with her. She appreciated Danzo’s efforts, because not many clanswomen had been patient enough with her brain injury to try for very long, but she just wished that it didn’t have to involve so much math and stupid calculations!

Sakumo expressed surprise the second night when she told him that Danzo was working with her to better her olfaction and tracking skills, after Kushina and Kokoro had tucked themselves away for the night. (“ _The **captain** is teaching **you**? Ah, Tsume, I didn’t mean to insult you – don’t pout at me like that. Danzo-sensei is a teacher at heart – although he’ll never admit to anything – but the man is a very harsh task maker, and his heart is **very** difficult to reach.” _And Sakumo had given her an unreadable expression as he rested his chin on clasped hands, the fire light reflecting orange off his dark eyes. _“Tsume-chan is different though. Danzo-sensei is unusually kind with you. It speaks of a fondness I’ve seen him have for only two other living persons – the Hokage, and the Head of Internal Affairs. He’s guarded even with his own clan and family.”)_ And from the way the conversation went and the unreadable expression on his face, Tsume couldn’t help but wonder if Sakumo _knew_ about the brothel and what she did – would Kushina have said anything? Would Kushina even _know_ herself? What if they told Kokoro, and that was why Kokoro seemed to hate Tsume, why she had sent that genjutsu-Orochimaru after Tsume?

Kokoro always had disdain for the kunoichi who often did reconnaissance and seduction missions. (“ _They give the rest of us kunoichi a bad name.”)_

On the fourth day of patrol, Tsume detected non-allied shinobi. _Thank goodness_ , the boredom outside of Danzo’s stupid lectures and mental exercises was tempting her to try and prank Danzo – and that would probably get her killed faster than any enemy.

“That’s funny,” she said, wrinkling her nose and pulling Ichi up short. Danzo stilled Juubi (otherwise known by everyone else as That Disobedient Cow) and trained his gaze on her. “I smell shinobi and earth, and I can smell the way they came forward, but it’s like their trail just ends in thin air. That just doesn’t happen.”

The countryside was filled with the rolling hills, gullies, and buttes that Tsume had observed when Grandmother forced her to run nearly nonstop. She couldn’t see over the tall prairie grass, which had all died and were crinkly and stiff, but Danzo could easily spot invaders (or their trails through the grass) from Juubi’s back.

Danzo turned Juubi’s head so they faced the direction that Tsume pointed. “How many are there? Could they be channeling nature chakra?” That had been one of yesterday’s lectures. Danzo had theorized that channeling nature chakra cloaked one’s own chakra and physical presence with surrounding scents, almost like drawing a blanket around them to mute their presence. Tsume didn’t care about the logistics, only that it made it harder for her to smell.

“I…I don’t think so. The original trail isn’t muted at all, and I could smell forty-two nin. And it also smells of fresh earth.” She hunched her shoulders forward and tightened her knees around Ichi. “I, um, I know some of those scents.” Especially _his_ – she would forever remember the scent of the man who won her at Auction, who had fathered the child that was taken away from her.

Danzo went very still, his body loose and languid in the saddle. “Earth, as in dirt, and not the country?”

“Yeah. They’re Iwa nin.”

Danzo dismounted from the horse after glancing around quickly, then shouldered Juubi before the horse could step on Danzo’s foot. “How far away would you estimate the fresh smell of dirt to be?” Juubi was only slightly cooperative with Danzo, frequently testing Danzo’s limits as if he was looking for any holes in Danzo’s constant defense.

“Um.” Tsume rubbed her nose, ticked some of her fingers off as she mentally multiplied numbers and carried the thee over.... She tapped the top of Ni’s head. “About fifty kilometers away, I think? Ni, can you smell the Iwa nin?” Ni straightened her head upward, and then hunched down as her tail dipped low in warning. “How far away are we?”

Ni whined.

“Sorry, I don’t speak their language yet,” Tsume told Danzo as he cuffed Juubi’s nose for making a covert attempt to bite Danzo. Well, actually, she had figured out the bits about food and sleep, but that didn’t count. “Ni, give me a wag for each kilometer of distance between us.” She and Danzo counted – one, two, three... eight. Ni’s tail went still. “Eight kilometers.” Tsume frowned. “No, that can’t be right. Not by my nose. But I’m only at twenty percent and we’re upwind of them – should I increase it to a hundred?”

“What’s eight in dog years?” Danzo asked as he crouched down. He made several seals before sinking two fingers into the ground. “This is a technique my sensei taught me – I have a much smaller range that he did because he was a true sensor, but if it’s only eight kilometers…” Tsume felt his chakra pulse several times. “They’re tunnel-traveling underground – very typical of Iwa – and they are only eight kilometers away. They’re heading straight for the wagon train. An underground ambush would destroy the wagons and all the wounded riding the wagons. Tsume, get this information to Mifune-sama and Sakumo. And then you are to _stay_ at the wagon train until the fighting is over.”

“What are you going to do? How did you and Ni sense them?” Tsume asked as he mounted Juubi, frustrated that she couldn’t smell people underground that were only eight kilometers away. Danzo bit back a shout as Juubi reared before he could balance himself in the saddle.

“I could sense their location and their speed by the vibrations in the ground. Knock it off, you damn cow! Ni can probably hear them.” Oh, she forgot that the hearing of ninken was almost as sensitive as their olfaction. “I’m going after the Iwa nin. I’ll stall them until the help you fetch arrives, and they’ll help me finish taking them out.”

“Right now?”

“Nah, feel free to wait until night time. Yes, right now. Go! You are _not_ to be anywhere near the battle.”

Tsume dug her heels into Ichi’s side and directed him back to the wagon train, which was five kilometers behind. Just as the other three ninken followed suite, she heard Danzo tell himself, “I may just be joining the Second Hokage today, and it’s probably because of my own mount. That way, you damn cow! We’re going that way!”

As Ichi charged through the grass following the trail that Juubi had made when they paced away from the wagon train, Tsume wondered why Danzo was going to join a dead man. And then her mind bounced down the path of least resistance.

A dead man who had been killed by Iwa shinobi.

Twenty elite Iwa nin, to be precise. Everything that Tsume remembered about the Second Hokage was what Aunt Natsumi shared, before and after the brain injury, lips smiling the whole time while her scent was laden with sorrow.

And Danzo was going off to face forty-two Iwa nin – twice the number that had brought down the Second. Tsume yanked Ichi to a halt. “Stop! Stop!” She riffled through her pockets left-handed the best she could, but found nothing to write with or on. “Those who abandon their companions are worse than trash,” she whispered to herself. Danzo didn’t have the strength or skills of the man-god Aunt Natsumi often described, even if only half of what she said was true, and Tsume just couldn’t let Danzo die. Danzo had done so much for her, and she could never repay him for his rescue. She couldn’t lose the steady bulwark he had become in her life – not now, not after all that he had done for her, even if he was a mean old butthead sometimes.

Tsume pulled her forehead protector off. She stared momentarily at her distorted reflection – it had belonged to her sister, and the feelings of pride and grief had been nearly overwhelming when Sakumo tied it to her forehead the morning the wagon train departed for Konoha. She bit the exposed end of her right thumb bloody, and tried writing, “Help!” across the spiral leaf. It wasn’t very distinguishable on the tarnished metal. Tsume groaned. “Oh – I’m going to be in so much trouble for this.” She saturated the strip with as much blood as she could, biting herself several more times, until the cloth ties were sufficiently bloody. She held it out to Shi. “Get this to Sakumo immediately! Now, Shi, go!”

Shi reluctantly accepted it, backed away a few steps, and then whined. It was a low whine that Tsume had never heard before. “Don’t worry about me,” Tsume said. “I’ll have Ichi, Ni, and San with me. That gives Danzo four allies before help comes, and that’s more than what the Second Hokage had.” She pointed at the direction of the wagon train. “Go, and lead them to where Danzo and I will be, now!”

Shi shot forth like an arrow from the string, clods of dirt flung from the chakra-enhanced leaps.

Tsume rearranged the contents of her pockets so that her blast tags were in easy reach in one pocket, and her throwing stars in another. Then she took several gulps of water from her canteen, figuring that being dehydrated on the battle field wasn’t such a good thing, and she probably wasn’t going to get a chance for a sip in the middle of the fight. “All right,” she told Ichi, Ni, and San. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to ambush the Iwa shinobi. We know where they’re coming and how many. Surprise is on our side, so I figure we’ll take out at least five of them before they know what hit them. Ichi’s got my back – well, I’ve got his – so it’s Ni’s responsibility to have Danzo’s back. San, your main objective is to attack hard and fast. Don’t worry about protecting me. The more enemies we take out, the better the odds, and the safer I’ll ultimately be.”

Tsume took a deep breath. She remembered the last fight she got into – the flood of adrenaline through her body, the chakra-enhanced speed and strength. Her chakra levels felt restored – and even felt larger than when Danzo had rescued her, like a muscle that was bulkier from working out with large weights – but she still didn’t have the full use of her arms. And she was really, really bad at throwing stars with her left hand, even though Sakumo had made her practice every night by the fire light.

She decided that she was going to try healing herself tonight to help speed up the process, no matter how angry that made Danzo. Besides, she knew that healing wouldn’t make him any angrier than what he was going to be when she charged into the battle after being commanded otherwise. 

“I can’t think of anything else to say, except…” Tsume grinned and turned Ichi towards the direction of Danzo’s charging scent. “Except we’re going in like the Inuzuka women of old – cry havoc and lose the hounds of hell!” Or was it _loose_ the hounds of war? She wasn’t exactly sure how the idiom went.

With her nose and butt charged with chakra, Tsume leaned low against Ichi’s long body to decrease drag as he and the other ninken quietly ran through the tall grass. She admired their sleek lines and the deadly air that surrounded them, like predators closing in on the kill. They truly were beautiful creatures.

Juubi was able to cover more distance because his speed was faster and his legs were longer than the ninken. Tsume was only half-way there when she heard the distant explosion at nearly the same time as she smelled a lot of fresh ground churned up. Danzo and Juubi’s scents also changed, and now she smelled the forty-two Iwa nin, all breaking apart and scattering away from where it had been a dense blot deep in the earth.

Tsume increased her olfaction to sixty percent – within seconds, five Iwa scents went static. She smelled Juubi’s blood and spike in adrenaline, but Danzo remained unharmed and felt like he was calm and centered, like the eye of a storm. The scent of earth was constantly disturbed – doton jutsu, like the way she’d seen Danzo make a pit. She knew there were jutsu to make the ground spike beneath your opponent’s feet, and, uh, other kinds of attacks. She also smelled burnt clay – _he_ had smelled of clay, too. And _he_ was there, using ninjutsu after ninjutsu soaked in his chakra.

She was going into this fight blind. A ninja must always be prepared. She couldn’t go in blind – Danzo would kill her! “Can you guys make bunshin of yourselves?” Tsume whispered, even though they were probably too far away to be heard by the enemy. Without breaking stride, Tsume found herself surrounded by thirty ninken bunshin. “Good. Too bad I couldn’t attach a blast tag to each of the fakes, because then you could go all kamikaze on the Iwa.”

Tsume braced herself the last kilometer. Danzo was bleeding now, and there were thirty-two shinobi left. She pulled several blast tags out of her pockets, and steered Ichi close to tuck a blast tag into the Konoha forehead protectors that the ninken wore around their necks like collars. “Stick those on people when they’re not looking,” she told Ni and San. Aunt Natsumi had shown her and Kuromaru and Kakashi how the ninken could plant tags and poisons on their opponents, so she knew Grandmother’s ninken could do the same.

She could smell Sakumo, now – panicked and enraged – following after Shi with ten other shinobi, swifter than the samurai war horses. Based on the shifting and repositioning scents, Mifune was redistributing the samurai throughout the wagon train, preparing for an ambush. It wouldn’t take long for the reinforcements to reach her and Danzo. About – nine minutes? More or less? That seemed like a lifetime to Tsume as everything seemed to slow down, and her thoughts bounced around in her head, too fast to be anything but half-formed.

Tsume stuffed four blast tags under her cast. If worse came to worst… she wasn’t going to be taken alive and captured by the enemy, not by the man who had paid so much for her at auction. She didn’t want to die, but she also wasn’t going to place herself in the hands of a man whom Madame Haori had forbidden to return to her Palace after the third time he used Tsume. (“ _I don’t know how you’re doing it, child, but Daisuke-sama is far more brutal with you than my other girls. In my experience, once men have developed the taste of such brutality, it only worsens. The Iwa shinobi already do enough damage as it is. No, I’ll not have him return, no matter how much money he offers again._ ”)

Then Tsume added an extra blast tag in her cast, just in case four would only take off her arm, instead of her entire self. When it came to numbers, she understood that more was _always_ better when it came to blast tags.

Just as it had with the Kumo nin, time seemed to slow down as Tsume and the three ninken silently crested the small hill and entered the battle. It looked like some avenging god had cleaved the earth apart with a gigantic ax just a few minutes ago. One Iwa nin, almost dead from his severe wounds, rolled off the edge of the recently-created ravine and screamed as he plummeted down. It sounded like a very long drop. Spikes erupted from the earth intermittently from the earth, skewering an Iwa nin that Danzo used as a shield against one of the spikes. Juubi was a dark blur, kicking and biting, almost frenzied with bloodlust. The tall prairie grass had all been flattened by the fighting, so there was nothing to hide in.

Danzo was a dark blot on the rendered landscape, blocking attacks with a tanto Tsume didn’t know he had, making seals with his other hand to produce a severe blast of wind that shredded two more Iwa nin. She could smell his flagging chakra, the heavy sweat smeared with dirt, and the fresh blood that she could see coming from a laceration that arched shoulder to shoulder across his back.

There were twenty-eight Iwa nin remaining, and Sakumo and reinforcements were seven (or so - more or less?) minutes behind her.

None of the enemy noticed Tsume’s entrance until after Ichi and San had killed two shinobi by closing their giant maws around human necks, and crushing them. Tsume knew just how fragile the human spine is when you applied enough force – she wished both her arms worked. The third, a kunoichi, died when she angled her head to avoid the thrown star to which Tsume had tied a charged blast tag. The force of the blast blew the kunoichi’s head open, and sent the star spinning lightning-fast away from the blast to bury in another kunoichi’s knee. The kunoichi couldn’t dodge San as the ninken shredded her throat.

Twenty-four Iwa nin were left, and all twenty-four (and Danzo) had now turned their attention on her. Four nin split and ran as ninken bunshin pounced after – Tsume hoped they would keep running long after they realized that the bunshin couldn’t harm them. Juubi took advantage of one distracted shinobi to kick him with such force that Tsume heard bones snap. As Juubi trampled another shinobi to death, Tsume shifted half the chakra from her nose to her ears. The racket was almost intolerably loud.

She heard Danzo swearing _(“damn fucking brat can’t even remember fucking orders that I gave her—”),_ and wanted to yell that she did remember and that Sakumo was coming with reinforcements. Then the blast from Ni’s planted tag made her ears ring shrilly. Tsume dropped the chakra away from her ears just before San’s blast tag also erupted. The shinobi that San had planted the tag on managed to remove it and shunshin away before it was triggered.

The ground suddenly erupted beneath her, Daisuke’s chakra fueling the jutsu. Ichi scrambled to avoid the needle-sharp points that surrounded him, his paw pads torn bloody as he was unable to completely escape the circle of sharp points unscathed. Tsume braced her cast under his harness as his abrupt spin and cornering nearly unseated her. She stopped breathing as Ichi dove under Juubi – she felt her hair brush the underside of Juubi’s belly and saw the flash of an oncoming hoof towards her head. She released her seat’s chakra and let herself fall to Ichi’s left side. Agony tore through her right arm as she hung her full weight from the harness and her left foot dragged on the ground. Tsume struggled a few precious seconds to center herself on Ichi’s back after they cleared Juubi, reapplying chakra to secure her seating.

She threw a clumsy handful of stars at two nin that charged her. Another wind jutsu, stinking of Danzo’s anger, bisected the nin. Tsume dropped two blast tags beside them as Ichi slipped through. She heard one mutter a dying protest – “Oh god, no!” – before the blast finished what Danzo started.

Fifteen shinobi remained. Less than half a minute had passed, but it was long enough that the remaining enemy shinobi were able to mentally regroup themselves and shift into the offensive. Ichi was swift and surefooted as he dodged and weaved through the attackers. Most of the bunshin had been quickly and easily dispelled, narrowing down to the real ninken. Ni stayed close to Danzo’s side and they attacked together as if they had previously been partners. Tsume wondered just how often Danzo trained or sparred against Oyubi.

And then she forgot everything when she saw _him_ through the sharp pillars of earth, across the field. Daisuke had one hand thrust into a bag that smelled of clay, and his expression was murderous as his gaze met hers. She had never smelled anyone so angry before, not even Danzo or Grandmother could come close, and her inattention to her surroundings nearly cost her. Ichi’s abrupt corner made the unknown kunai slice across the side of her left arm, instead of getting buried into her lower back. She hissed as blood stained her sleeve. _Shikake’s going to be mad that I have to get more stitches in that arm._ Tsume almost giggled at how ridiculous it was that she would think of her sire in the middle of a life-or-death situation.

Ichi skidded to a halt just as another spike erupted from the earth, a hair away from the tip of his nose. Tsume glanced sideways at the deep ravine that was far too close to for her liking. She looked over in the other direction – Daisuke threw something at her. She saw a glimpse of teeth and tongue in the palm of his hand, and then Ichi was rearing back as a pinecone shaped out of clay bounced by his paws. Tsume saw it glow bright orange for a second, and then snapped her eyes shut as it exploded. The blast threw Ichi tumbling backwards, and she felt nauseous as her ears rang.

Ichi rolled on top of Tsume, unable to fight against the clay bomb's shock waves. Tsume was weightless for a brief heartbeat as she and Ichi tumbled over the edge of the ravine. She saw Danzo’s back – he was fighting another tanto-wielding nin – and then saw _him_ burst through the rising cloud of dirt that the blast had kicked up. She saw the whites of Daisuke’s eyes as she and Ichi plummeted.

Tsume released the chakra as she and Ichi struck a ledge that jutted out. They collided with each other and fell further. Ichi snapped at Tsume, snagging her left forearm arm with his teeth and applied chakra to his paws as he skidded down the side of the ravine. Teeth shredded flesh from elbow to wrist the momentum of her weight dragged her through his teeth, and they came to a dangling stop just above the floor of the ravine. Her arm stung, but not badly – everything seemed too far removed from her own body to hurt, even though she was aware of her broken arm throbbing. Ichi whined as he released Tsume and dropped to the ground. His paws were bloody – he had ripped out at least three claws - and blood dribbled from his ears. He tried to walk forward, but fell over with a whine, equilibrium as disrupted as his eardrums. There was just a blot of sky above them, so Tsume increased the chakra at her eyes to see better in the ravine’s darkness. She saw the nearby bodies of three Iwa nin who had fallen to their deaths, although they had already been in the process of dying when they rolled over the edges.

Tsume took a deep breath. She felt a deep sense of urgency. “I don’t like this,” she whispered. She fell backwards as the ground beneath her feet erupted upward again. “No! Ichi!” She slammed her left hand against the rising wall of stone, and left a smeared handprint, blood almost indistinguishable against the hard-packed soil. “ _Ichi_!” A snarling growl was the only reply. She couldn’t hear the sounds of fighting, but did hear scraping on the other side, and smelled _his_ presence. She pulled another star out of her pocket as she whirled about and hunched down to minimize herself as a target.

Daisuke was older than Danzo, his long blond hair faded mostly to white and deep lines surrounding his mouth and eyes. He looked calm and collected as he considered her with one hand settled against his hip, but she smelled the fiery stench of anger simmering below his cool appearance. “You make a far better whore than a kunoichi,” he said. “And really, I should’ve known there was something _off_ about you – no girl is good enough to drive a man to a frenzy, yeah, no matter how sweet your cherry was. Especially a homely urchin like _you._ ”

She growled at him.

“Ah, how cute.” He licked the tongue that jutted from his left palm, almost like he was sharing a kiss. Tsume’s stomach swam with revulsion. “But I prefer my whores to scream, remember?” He advanced slowly and deliberately, and Tsume pressed herself against the stone, as if she could become one with it. “They’re not going to hear you scream down here, yeah. Even if that one little tree hugger up there managed to kill all my men, you won’t be found.” He moved in a flash before she could react, one hand closing around her left wrist with a crushing force. The star fell uselessly to the ground. Teeth sank into her flesh, right against the lacerations from Ichi’s teeth, as he hoisted her up by the front of her vest to the level of his face with his other hand. His voice was an ugly whisper. “And I will make you _scream_ all over again.”

All the focus in her world narrowed down to him. Her mind flipped itself end over end as a memory rushed forward. A man has two heads, Danzo had told her. _(“In my experience, men typically follow the head below their belt, and such men are vulnerable to this.”_ He tapped her forehead. _“My strength and speed cannot be compared to your thinking, no matter how linear it is, because the head on your shoulders will always outwit a man’s miniature head.”_ )

And then another distant voice.

(“… _your seal has the potential of being a very deadly weapon, if you choose to use it.”_ )

As Daisuke released her wrist and slowly, deliberately, wrapped his hand around her neck, Tsume gathered all the chakra that she used to boost her sight, smell, and hearing, and slammed all of it into her right big toe where she was constantly aware of the seal’s buzzing presence. Chakra surged up the line of her leg, like the seal was forcefully blooming open and branding itself into her skin. Daisuke froze, and his eyes widened as sweat broke out on his forehead. Teeth nipped at her jugular.

He pulled her close just to slam her into the stone wall again. “ _Bitch._ What are you? Is this some kind of fucking bloodline?” He ruthlessly shoved his pelvis against hers. She felt the burgeoning erection, could smell his spiking lust that was quickly overwhelming the anger. Revulsion curled in her gut as he licked her cheek. “ _Nice_ , yeah. I’ve always wanted to fuck someone as a battle rages around us. Blood already excites me, and a warm pussy should make the experience _explosive_ , yeah.” He rolled his hips and she kicked his knee. “Hah, I think I _almost_ felt that.” Blood streamed from her left arm and dripped to the ground. His hand was slick with it. Her blood. It wasn’t the first time that happened. She was determined to make it the last.

Daisuke easily stripped off Oyubi’s too-large pants before Tsume realized it, and then tore her panties off – the skin on her hips felt bruised from where he ripped the cloth away. He studied her a moment as she glared at him, ready to projectile-vomit all over him as her stomach curdled in warning. His eyes were dilated and his breathing was rapid. She heard his pounding heart through the ringing in her own ears as he grinned. “No, I don’t think I like looking at you. The back of your head was always more attractive than your face, yeah. Funny that you should like dogs – I took you the first time like a bitch, yeah. How’s about a repeat, sweets?”

He easily forced her face-first against the rough, uneven ground. Her right arm was all but useless as muscle spasms made it lock up, twisted and trapped painfully beneath her torso. Daisuke dug his fingers into the lacerations of her left arm to pin her down, and she felt stinging pain as some of the stitches ripped. His breath – that same, stinking breath – was on the back of her neck as he used his other hand to explore her genitals. A tongue laved her vulva. “You’re not wet. Can’t have that, yeah, otherwise it would be _uncomfortable_.” He easily ripped away her vest, and then Oyubi’s shirt to bare her torso, and bit her little breasts with his hand.

Tsume managed to move her head to the side so he could hear her. “Never stopped you before!” And then she added, because for some reason men seemed proud of their size, “Pencil dick!”

“Oh?” He switched hands, sliding one through her hair and pulling back so tight that her scalp burned and her neck ached, while his other hand – slick with her blood – dipped between her legs again. “Haven’t you heard, sweets? It’s not the _size,_ it’s how you _use it,_ yeah _._ I think I like you feisty and mouthy – makes up for your lack of femininity. You were never this feisty for me in _bed._ All you did the last times was scream like a banshee.” She felt two fingers prodding ruthlessly, and hoped that his fingernails were clean. His hand disappeared just before she heard the rustle of clothing. “Yeah, they’re all busy up there. We have us some time for a quickie.”

Tsume could barely move her left arm – her hand felt cold and numb, especially her pinky and ring fingers. She shifted her right shoulder – she still had her trump card. She was going to take the bastard out – make sure he never hurt another woman or girl again – but had to time it just right so he couldn’t escape with shunshin. Oh, she’d make sure his climax was _explosive,_ all right. It was going to blow him right out of this world.

Danzo had said that the more the men opposed her or fought their desire, the more frenzied the seal made them. “Stop it,” she snarled with a jerk of her head. _Fight me fighting you!_ Bright circular lights exploded in her vision as he slammed her face-first into the ground, but didn’t release her hair. She kicked backwards, pounding the bastard with her heels as blood gushed from her nose. The world seemed so much more distant as her olfaction became muddled and dim.

“Well, that’s as effective as a cat swatting at the sea’s waves, yeah.” He released his grip from her hair so he could adjust his position. She heard Ichi howling on the other side of the stone wall, paws scraping rapidly against the stone wall that separated them.

Tsume braced herself as a new agony entered the current mix of pain – he thrust into her, the blood making it sticky instead of slick, and set a brutal pace. He bit her shoulder, uncaring of how he broke the skin, his hair curtaining yellow-white all around her face. Another mouth bit her hip where he rested his left hand. She felt the pounding high in her abdomen, pain lancing and fire burning with every thrust. Danzo had somehow managed to make it feel good, but Daisuke always made it hurt. She was too dry, and he was too rough – membranes tore, and blood flowed. She felt like a sponge being squeezed of every last drop.

His hips were moving against hers with greater urgency, and she caught a faint whiff of his hormones spiking as his climax drew near. Tsume forced chakra into her nose, trying to smell through the swelling and blood, so she could time the blast tags with the exact moment of his orgasm.

She caught the edge of Sakumo’s scent.

Dread immediately flooded her, and her stomach swam as she mentally conjured images of Sakumo in Daisuke’s position, his own mind broken by the seal. How close was Sakumo? He must’ve reached Danzo, but had Sakumo found Tsume yet? She couldn’t tell with her damaged nose. _I can’t let him see me like this!_ She _had_ to turn the seal off – she tried pulling chakra back from her seal, but only felt it burn hotter against her skin. She tried pushing herself upright with her left arm, ignoring the white edges of pain that threatened to drag her into absolute nothingness, muttering, “No, no, no!” Daisuke gently forced her head down, and sucked the skin on the back of her neck. She shrieked. “Stop it!”

“Not done yet, sweets,” he whispered against her skin, fully enamored with her now. Tsume desperately wished he would slam her head against the ground again to knock her out. She felt the heat of acute embarrassment flush across her face and bare shoulders.

“You _are_ done,” whispered a voice that made the hair on the back of Tsume’s neck rise on end and even more dread swept through her, chasing the wave of horrified embarrassment. Killing intent flared around them as she felt a looming cold _nothing_ just below her hands and knees. Daisuke gurgled as a sword penetrated his neck. Tsume glimpsed the blood-smeared tip of the saber from the corner of her eye before it receded. Daisuke collapsed heavily on her, his cock quivering in release as his scent went static beneath the flare of pheromones.

“No,” she whispered again, trying to pull the chakra away from the seal. It clung to her, like a greedy leech. She felt the weight of the dead shinobi disappear as Sakumo pulled the body off. His killing intent was smothering.

“It’s all right, Tsume, I’ve got you.”

Tsume kicked Sakumo as he touched her ankle. “Stop!” Another burst of adrenaline gave her the strength to push upright and flip herself around. She scooted away as tried to cover herself with her useless arms. He couldn’t see her like this! “Don’t come any closer! Don’t touch me!” Her voice was shrill – tears slid down her face.

Sakumo looked shattered, frozen in place with one hand reaching out to her. His other hand was tight around the hilt of his bloodied saber. His killing intent sputtered and died away.

“Go away!” Tsume shrieked as she clamped her knees together and tucked her legs under. She pressed herself tight against the ravine wall. Semen and blood dribbled down the leg that burned with chakra, blood dripped from her nose and arm – the rest of her burned with embarrassment and agonizing pain. She pulled as much chakra as she could away from the seal, away from her big toe. She wanted to trigger the blast tags and erase herself from this existence, from knowing that _Sakumo_ had seen _everything_ , but couldn’t because Sakumo was standing too close. “I want Danzo, now!”

He floundered. “I…”

“DON’T TOUCH ME! I WANT DANZO! DANZO DANZO DANZO!”

Sakumo shrank away like she had struck him. Only Danzo could help – he knew about the seal, he’d turn it off again. Danzo _had_ to help her – he just had to! Danzo was in the same void with Tsume, his soul knee-deep in the deepest, darkest filth that Orochimaru warned her about. Sakumo was Sakumo – brave, strong, goodhearted, and full of life and acceptance for a little girl who just wanted to be wanted. Tsume didn’t want Sakumo to want her less because of what he had just witnessed, and couldn’t bear to have him want her more because of the seal.

Tsume curled into a ball and clumsily folded her right arm over her head, the cast a heavy, inflexible weight. Maybe if she couldn’t see him… She flinched as Sakumo draped his warm shirt over her bare body, and bit back the tears as he departed. She whimpered and rocked, trying to focus on the physical pain of her battered body and aching head instead of the emotional pain that wracked her heart, trying to ignore how Sakumo’s scent was too close, too cloying.

On the other side of the wall, Ichi whined and pawed uselessly at the stone wall. “It’ll be okay, Ichi,” she called out softly. Ichi only whined more, which made Tsume sniffle uselessly and hiccup, because she wanted to make brave, wonderful Ichi feel better, but couldn’t, because she was just useless. ( _“Good little bitch. Good little whore.”)_ She pressed the edge of Sakumo’s shirt against her bleeding nose. Gosh – how much blood did she have left to lose?

Tsume hadn’t moved from her position when Sakumo returned with Danzo. She couldn’t smell Danzo, but knew that he was angry with her. She heard the shuffling gait of Danzo dragging his leg beneath him, and his grunt of pain as he rolled Daisuke’s body further away.

“Make Sakumo go away,” she whimpered as Danzo knelt beside her and let his hand rest on the curve of her hip. It felt heavy. “I don’t want to be seen… Oh gosh – tell me it’s not on. It still burns!”

Danzo traced the outside of her bare thigh, seeking any anomalies or characters on her skin. “I don’t see the seal active anywhere on you.”

Tsume desperately hoped that was a good sign. “It’s not working right now, is it? I _had_ to use it, Danzo. I _had_ to distract the man.” She peeked over the edge of her cast at Danzo, through the folds of Sakumo’s shirt. All she could see was his folded legs and lower torso. She heard Sakumo swear under his breath, and hid her face against the crook of her elbow. “Make him go away, please.”

Danzo must’ve used sign language with Sakumo, since she heard movement but no spoken words. After a tense moment, Sakumo said, “I’ll be back after I get the ninken, Tsume-chan. I’ll help Ichi out, first. Please, I just…” and then his chakra flared so he could swiftly climb the ravine walls, his broken words left hanging in the air.

Danzo sighed. He sounded nothing but regretful. “Ah, Tsume.” The gentleness in his voice hurt so much more than his anger did. “ _Why_ didn’t you obey me?”

That broke the dam. Tsume failed to stop the uncontrollable sobs. She felt her body shaking as the adrenaline left, and she wailed as Danzo pulled her upright. “He w-wasn’t supposed to _see_!” She felt horrified, ashamed, and guilty. She didn’t know what she would’ve done if Sakumo had been caught in the seal like Daisuke had been. She vowed to chop her toe off to remove the damn seal from her body, so then Sakumo would always be safe. “I’ll h-have nine toes left!”

“What are you talking about?” Danzo didn’t wait for her response as he split open the seam in the right sleeve of Sakumo’s shirt to make room for her cast, and then stuffed her arms into the sleeves. He hesitated when his fingers brushed against teeth-shaped marks that surrounded a breast, before buttoning the front closed with more force than was necessary. After Danzo clumsily sat beside her, he put his arms around Tsume.

Tsume sank into his embrace, desperately grateful that he was protecting her even though his anger was increasing and his grip hurt both of her arms. She felt the void beneath her, surrounding her and Danzo, but that was okay. Danzo didn’t let anything stop him from doing what needed to be done – not even great big voids that swallowed you up whole and sucked away all happiness from life.

Tsume suddenly felt dirty. She sank the claws of her left hand into the inside of her left thigh, and shredded flesh. “Get it off!” she screamed, trying to remove the skin that was smeared with semen. Danzo forced her hand away. She thrashed her limbs even though the pain made her vision go white around the edges. “GetitoffgetitoffGETITOFF!”

“Hush. Shhh. Think of puppies, Tsume.” Danzo folded his arms around her again, trapping her arms to her sides. “Romping puppies with big flopping ears and wagging tails. Think of Kuromaru – he must be getting big, don’t you think? Big like Kakashi is, although Kakashi probably doesn’t have flopping ears. What do you think they’re doing right now? Are they playing another keep away game with dango? I know you could smell them if you tried right now.”

“C-can’t smell anything! He b-broke my nose!”

“Hush. I’ll look at it, but I doubt it’s permanent.”

Tsume’s sobbing eventually dwindled into hiccups as Danzo rocked, his whispers distracting her from the void and the shame and the overwhelming revulsion that made her stomach and head swim. She distantly heard Sakumo removing Ichi from behind the wall, grunting about how the dog was nearly too damn heavy to be carried out of the ravine in his arms. Danzo wiped her nose surreptitiously with the corner of her borrowed shirt. “I know you want to be clean. Here, we’ll use my water canteen to clean up. Will that be all right?”

“Get it off,” Tsume whispered. Danzo, using a clean, wet patch from the shredded remains of Oyubi’s shirt, cleaned her face, and then wiped her thighs and pelvis clean of semen and blood. The water was clean and Danzo kept his touching to a minimum. After cleaning her up, he carefully and swiftly used another scrap of shirt to dress the lacerations on Tsume’s thigh. Then he helped her with the pants – the only article of clothing that Daisuke hadn’t destroyed.

“I think we’re done here,” Danzo said. His gaze flickered to her face. “And _you_ will be staying in a wagon for the rest of the journey.” He started poking and prodding her nose.

She clung to Danzo. “No! No, I’ll do anything – I’ll obey next time, I promise! I’ll do anything – even cook for you! I make a great meatloaf, really, I do. Don’t leave me – please, don’t leave me alone!”

He didn’t try prying her loose. “I’m not leaving and you won’t be alone. I’m going to be stuck to the wagon myself when Mifune-dono learns that I _completely_ ruptured my hamstring. The chakra exhaustion doesn’t help, either. Hold still, now. I have to straighten the bones and cartilage, and this is going to hurt like a real bitch.”

It _did_ hurt, but not as much as when Minato had broken the spine out of her broken grip a lifetime ago. It made breathing a little easier, but also renewed the bleeding and did nothing for restoring her normal sense of smell.

“Now I just have to figure out how the hell we’re going to get out of this ravine. Take this with your right hand and press it against your nostrils. Yeah, just like that. Don’t move it, even if it bleeds all the way through. Do you think we should try henging some wings and fly out? Speaking of wings, let me see your left arm.”

Tsume wiggled around until she was comfortable while he cleaned and dressed the bloody bite on her neck. He grit his teeth so hard she heard them grinding together. She had to use the back of her right hand to press the rag to her nostrils. “Can ninjas really henge wings and fly?”

“No, it’s impossible – wait… that would be a lie. If memory serves me correctly, there actually is a wandering clan that lives high in the northernmost mountains of Lightning with a bloodline limit that lets them sprout wings out of their backs.”

“Oh. That’s a really useful bloodline limit.” Tsume imagined flying out of the ravine, flying away from the man whose dead body lay too close for comfort. If she had been able to do that, then Sakumo never would’ve seen what happened. “Gosh, how come I don’t have anything useful like that?”

Danzo patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Tsume is plenty useful as she is… even _if_ she doesn’t obey her team leader’s commands, and even _if_ she’s prone to getting severely injured – can you imagine the newfound disasters she’d get into if she had wings? And if I’m not mistaken, it appears that our companion has returned with a rope in hand.”

Tsume shrank down as Sakumo approached again. She pulled her legs up to hide from him, pressing her forehead against her kneecaps. It was awkward to tuck her right arm close to keep the torn cloth against her nose, but she managed it anyway. She ignored the painful tugging on her left arm as Danzo carefully administered first aid to the multiple lacerations and torn stitches.

“Danzo?” Sakumo’s voice was almost a whimper. “What’s wrong?”

A sigh. “Aside from the obvious, you fumbling buffoon? Tsume is _mortified_. She doesn’t want to be seen like this by the father figure she respects and loves the most in her life. I think…” There was a pause as he finished with her arm. “I think she’s afraid, if that’s possible.”

“Tsume-chan is still Tsume-chan. This changes nothing – I love her no less right now than I did when she returned from the dead a few days ago.”

“But _now_ you think differently of her, and I think that’s what scares her.”

At the cold acknowledgement in Danzo’s voice, Tsume pressed her face harder against her kneecaps. Maybe, if she tried really, _really_ super-hard, she could melt into herself and disappear. She wondered if there was a bloodline limit that could do something similar.

“Well, yes, I do now think differently.” She flinched at Sakumo’s words, and tried to remember the importance of breathing. “I’ve always thought that Tsume is a remarkable person to survive all the lumps that life has thrown her way. I now think it’s truly a wonder that she trusts you – or anyone, really – after what just happened. I now think I am ready to kill myself, because I failed to protect her or keep her safe, Danzo.” Sakumo’s voice cracked. “I failed Hidarime’s baby sister, the daughter of my heart, and I can’t help but now think of what I’ll do if Tsume never forgives me for failing her.”

Tsume peeked over her kneecaps. Sakumo looked shattered – his shoulders were rounded forward and his arms hung from his side like two dead weights. He seemed so vulnerable and small without a shirt. She almost gave his back, but knew he wouldn’t take it. _Dear, gentle Sakumo,_ she thought in pity. Full of life and happiness – she could feel a looming cold beneath his feet, hungry to swallow him whole. “You didn’t fail me. It was my fault,” she told Sakumo, forcing herself to speak above a whisper. “I…I _made_ that shinobi rape me.”

Danzo pinched her. She figured that was a warning not to discuss her seal. “I knew that man was powerful, and he followed me and Ichi down here. I had to distract him, and Danzo once told me that a man has two heads, and I could outwit the little head below the man’s belt.”

“That’s…” Sakumo wrung his hands. “I can’t believe you’d tell her something like _that_ , Danzo. Especially when she’s just a genin!”

“It’s true though,” Tsume said defensively. “My half a brain is better than a man’s little head!” Daisuke also would’ve been dead because of her if she had just triggered the blast tags a few moments earlier, instead of trying to wait until his climax. She would also be dead, but then she wouldn’t be facing Sakumo in her shame and humiliation. She choked back a sob. “Why are you so _mad_ at me?”

Sakumo dragged a hand down his face, smearing it with dirty blood. He swayed as if ready to collapse. “I’m not mad – not at you, at least. I’m mad with _me_ , with that dead man, with Danzo and the ninken that were supposed to be protecting their alpha, and I’m sure some of this is also Juubi’s fault – I’m mad at everyone _who isn’t_ _you_. I can’t… The shock of Shi delivering your blood-drenched forehead protector nearly gave me a heart attack. To lose you when I just got you back – that would’ve killed me, Tsume. But even with you alive and here with me now, I still feel like I’m _losing_ you.”

Tsume felt Danzo’s gaze sear the top of her head. “ _Bloody_ forehead protector?”

She realized belatedly that it probably wasn’t such a good idea to be pressed so closely to Danzo when he was reminded of her disobedience. At least he finished patching up her arm. She dropped her gaze to her feet. Her toes were caked with congealing blood, except her right big toe, which glimmered purple. “Well, you _told_ me to go get help,” she said in a small voice, muffled by the cloth still pressed against her nose.

“You were supposed to send _yourself, not_ your own forehead protector drenched in _blood_!”

“It wasn’t _that_ drenched. And besides, you can’t just abandon your comrades,” Tsume added hastily, as if she couldn’t sense the steam coming out of Danzo’s ears. “I’d rather be trash than to have you dead! So I came back. _And_ I still got the message to the others, just like you told me to!”

“Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their companions are worse than trash.” Sakumo’s voice lifted slightly with amusement. “If nothing else, Captain, she remembered Sakumo-sensei’s Rule #1, the Golden Rule.”

“Oh shit, _you_ have _rules_? And there’s more than just one?” Tsume glanced up to see Danzo pinch the bridge of his nose. She saw his other hand flash through the ANBU sign language – _talk after Konoha._ She wondered if Danzo was answering a question of Sakumo’s, even though Sakumo’s hands were still when she looked over.

“Let’s go home, Tsume,” Sakumo said, carefully approaching. She tensed just as he was within reach. He squatted and rested his hand on the ground, fingertips just a hair from touching her toes. “Home, to Kakashi and Kuromaru, and your crazy Aunt Natsumi.”

_Home._ Longing overwhelmed her heart. Home – where street vendors were roasting chestnuts this time of year; where the Uchiha police roamed the streets and ensured quick and sure dispensation of justice and the occasional ticket for disturbing the peace; where the Hokage would sometimes catch the Unholy Trio in the middle of a prank and praise them for their ingenuity and then follow through with the occasional tip on how not to get caught; where Aunt Natsumi would let Tsume freely roam the stacks and stacks of summoning contracts and daydream of which one she’d one day have, or where Tsume would have to hunt Aunt Natsumi down when she was late for dinner because she got lost _again_. Gosh, she even missed Uchiha Fugaku, as impossible as that seemed.

“Promise?” she asked Sakumo as her eyes stung.

His smile was small, but genuine. “By all that I hold dear, I promise.” She grabbed his hand, and let him gently pull her to her feet. “Come on, I’ll help you up, and then maybe you can settle your ninken down – they’re being rather difficult for the med nin to heal, and I think Ichi's eardrums are ruptured since he's completely lost his sense of balance – so I can come back to help Danzo.”

Danzo looked insulted. “I do _not_ need any assistance to get out of this hellhole myself, thank you very much.” Danzo was collapsed on the ground, barely able to sit upright.

“But, Captain, we—”

“I can walk just fine without you getting in my way and tripping me up.” His right pants leg was saturated with blood. So was his shirt.

“You didn’t—”

“You’re more of a hindrance than assistance, anyway.” Danzo was able to flop his hand upright in the air long enough to give Sakumo a rude gesture. Sakumo’s eyes narrowed in challenge.

Tsume glanced between Danzo and Sakumo. She stared for a moment at Danzo’s legs. “I don’t need to help either,” she declared, trying not to sound devious. “Because I’m got two working legs, so _I_ can just tree-walk my way up the walls. My arms won’t even get in the way.”

Danzo glared at her. “ _You_ don’t have the chakra.”

Sakumo rolled his eyes. “And you do?” he shot back with exasperation. “Look, it’s obvious that Tsume looks up to you, Captain. Not that I blame her,” he hurried to add as Danzo’s eye went flat and his face dark, “because you are one of our finest warriors who _isn’t_ an emotionally-stunted misbehaving sexual deviant with antisocial tendencies. Um… I think I said that wrong. That is, you aren’t misbehaving. Other than being an emotionally-stunted misanthrope, you _really_ are an example to live by. ”

“Get to the point, you rambling idiot.”

Sakumo carefully ruffled Tsume’s hair. It was matted against her head. “I want Tsume to know that there’s no shame in accepting help when it’s needed, and especially when it’s offered.”

“I do too know!” Tsume shrank back at the knowing looks that Danzo and Sakumo exchanged, before both trained their eyes on her. “Today doesn’t count,” she mumbled, feeling exhausted and like one gigantic bruise, with the newly-obtained lacerations in her arm and her thigh and pelvis stinging sharply. Her head also throbbed and her brain felt tight, much like after her brain injury when Tsunade-hime was always coming over to the compound, but even her head didn’t hurt as much as her arms did right now.

Tsume was also beginning to feel horrible cramps in her abdomen. As battered as she was, Tsume would’ve thought she would be one gigantic throb of pain, but it seemed like every separate injury had its own cacophony of sound, and everything screamed a different tune. She reluctantly pulled the crumpled blast tags from her cast, soggy with her blood and sweat but still viable, and handed them to Sakumo. “Here. I was… I really _did_ have it all planned out, I promise. I was going to go out with a bang and take him with me.”

Sakumo stared at the blast tags in the palm of his hand, as if he was staring into the void, _and the void stared back._

For the first time, Tsume felt like she finally understood Orochimaru.

“This man, Daisuke,” said Danzo as he pushed himself to his feet with one leg; the other leg wouldn’t straighten fully. Tsume had a feeling that his hamstring was less ruptured and more severed by an enemy. “He was very strong – had a rare bloodline limit known as the explosion release, and I think he was the leader. Fighting the Iwa nin became much easier when Daisuke went after Tsume, since I didn’t have to dodge the high-powered doton jutsu. I think I’d be dead if it weren’t for her.” Danzo’s smile was strained and tired. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t in trouble for disobeying my orders. I _told_ you to go straight to the wagon train yourself.”

Tsume allowed Sakumo to lead her away from the area. Sakumo didn’t hesitate to pick her up and sit her on his broad shoulder when they reached the dangling rope. He wrapped an arm around her thighs to steady her balance. “If I had to do today all over again, I would,” Tsume said softly as he grabbed the rope one-handed and walked up the rock walls with chakra flaring at his feet. She turned her head and yelled at Danzo. “I wouldn’t change a thing, Danzo, no matter how mad you got! Ordering me away to face all those enemy nin yourself, that was awful! _You_ never left _me_!” Danzo had returned to the brothel. He removed Tsume from that place, and brought her back to the life and the people she loved, even though it got him in lots of trouble with Orochimaru. She blinked back tears as her voice trembled. “So I came back for you the same way you came back for me!”

His voice was distant as he curiously riffled through Daisuke’s pockets. “Not the same, brat.”

She huffed angrily. “Is too, you butthead!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally, I think this is where Danzo really shines. All the changes of his character has accumulated to this very point, where he unexpectedly finds himself to be a lifeline to a twelve year old girl who's frantically broken-hearted over a respected and admired adult seeing her at her worst. It's a far cry from what he became in canon. 
> 
> And then, to distract himself from his emotional roller coaster, he winds up plundering the pockets of the dead enemy.


	20. Alpha Years - Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've always had a difficult time reconciling how powerful the Uchiha Clan is, and I just didn't like them in general... until this chapter. Because somehow, in an attempt to bring some levity to the darkness of the Alpha Years, a part of me decided that the Uchiha are really just a bunch of overpowered dorks who remain flabbergasted with Inuzuka Natsumi's behaviors. (As a side note, if the Uchiha really were all that powerful, why do they keep dropping like flies? Hence why Kagami is still alive in this story.)

Sakumo deposited Tsume on the edge of the ravine and then slid down the rope to fetch Danzo. Tenkasu Kyou, the med nin with the nut-brown skin, broke away from where he had been healing Ichi’s paws, torn bloody and raw from his desperate attempts to dig through the stone wall to his alpha mistress.

“Are you hurt?” Kyou demanded as he placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her further away from the ravine’s edge. They were immediately crowded by all four ninken, who knew better than to lash out at allies. “Wow. Better fix your nose there, pronto.” Before she could say anything, he sent a wave of chakra through her body, and then jerked back as if Tsume kicked him in the balls. “Shit. Shit.” His near-blind panic attracted the attention of another Konoha med nin, a Yamanaka kunoichi whose name Tsume couldn’t remember. “Mai, you take this one.” Kyou pushed Tsume into Mai’s arms.

“What’s wrong with her?” Mai asked with a frown as she brushed a lock of her short blonde hair away from her tell-tale eyes. San and Shi stared at Mai as Ichi nudged Tsume’s elbow and whimpered.

“Battlefield… you- _know_ -what.

Mai’s breath hitched at that. " _What?"_ Tsume sensed the other Konoha nin and allied nin turn their attention on her as Mai sent a wave of chakra through Tsume just as Kyou had. Ni growled at them in warning. “I don’t have a kit for _that_. They never gave us any!”

A whisper rippled through the ranks of ninja who had accompanied Sakumo, almost like a wildfire.

_“Battlefield you-know-what?”_

_“Battlefield you-don’t-wanna know!”_

A shinobi from Jomae, whose left arm was splintered and in a sling, spat on an Iwa corpse in disgust, and then followed through with a vicious kick. “She’s just a kid, you bastards!”

To Tsume’s rising embarrassment, she realized that _everyone_ now knew she had been raped. “Come with me,” Mai said, gingerly placing her hand against Tsume’s left shoulder to steer her over to a broken stone spike where her ninken had been treated. She touched Tsume like Tsume was made of glass and ready to shatter at any moment. Tsume didn’t know why – the worst thing about being raped was how Sakumo had seen. It was actually over much faster than she was used to, and the pain in her pelvis wasn’t anything like the pain in both of her arms right now.

And then she realized that word would continue to spread through the wagon train once everyone returned, and then Kokoro and Kushina were going to know. Tsume wondered if she could hide out with Danzo for a while, since he seemed pretty useful at scaring away her teammates.

Tails wagging and ears perked high, all four ninken were grateful to see her. Tsume let herself snuggle in the middle of them, bracing her sore back against San, Ni pressing into her side, and Shi resting his head on her lap. Ichi licked her toes with a thumping tail as Kyou resumed healing Ichi’s paws. Mai’s hands glided over Tsume’s left arm, carefully sensing the damage without undressing Tsume.

“Everything will be okay,” Mai whispered to Tsume. “You’ll get through this.” She kept whispering the same things over and over, as if trying to convince herself more than Tsume. It occurred to Tsume that the Academy had done a really lousy job covering rape… unless it had been covered in those kunoichi-only classes that the Unholy Trio had a lifetime ban against ever attending? In retrospect, that might’ve been a really lousy decision on the Trio's part.

Then, cringing, Mai dropped her hands low. “May I touch you…there?”

Tsume stared at Mai for a long moment, and then said, “Look, I know this sounds odd, but I know how to fix this damage on myself. I was taught to. So if you heal my left arm, I can heal myself _down there_ , and then you don’t have to do any touching.” Especially not when Mai stank of pity and confusion.

“Are you sure that will be all right? I, I mean, I’m more for dealing with wounds of the mind, not so much the wounds of the body, but I can certainly heal your arm, yes.”

Well, Mai was certainly no Yuu, that was for sure. And Tsume had no intention of letting such a person anywhere near the wounds of her mind when they’re going to be blundering about in their speech, unsure of how to talk to her about the very cause of the wounds. And she certainly wouldn’t trust the woman with her precious nose. “I’ll be okay. I don’t remember most of what happened,” she had no qualms against lying to a Yamanaka, “partly because it was a blur, and partly because of my brain injury. Sakumo killed him though, and that makes me feel better.”

Mai wrung her hands for a few moments longer, glancing around as if she could pawn Tsume onto someone else. When she noticed that Kyou had left Ichi to tend to Danzo as Sakumo lifted him over the edge, she turned back to Tsume and rested hands that glowed with green chakra against Tsume’s left arm. She started muttering platitudes again, but Tsume tuned it out.

She relaxed against San and closed her eyes. Her nose stopped bleeding, so she took in as deep a breath as she could with as much chakra concentrated to her nose that she could spare. She tried to ignore the myriad of surrounding scents, to extend her awareness further out around them. Twenty percent – thirty – fifty – oh. Oh! She felt something burn in her heart, and almost didn’t recognize what joyful relief felt like. Mai left after healing the arm enough to stop the bleeding, but Tsume was comfortable where she was at, so she didn’t move.

When Sakumo approached Tsume, she tilted her head forward and opened her eyes. She did her best not to cringe at his close presence. “It’ll get worse from here if we go at it alone,” she told Sakumo as he crouched down beside her, balancing on the balls of his feet. 

“There’s not many Iwa nin out there, but there’s a lot of Kumo nin. It looks like they’re mainly fighting with the Kusa nin, except we have to go through the battle fields. Most of our people are wounded, and I don’t think the samurai are mobile enough if the Iwa or the Kumo come at us in large numbers.” Sakumo scratched behind Ichi’s ears, and studied her intensely. “I sent a messenger hawk to Konoha when we left the main camp, requesting reinforcements.”

“I figured.” Tsume grinned at Sakumo. “That had to be the only reason why I smell the Uchiha and the hell hounds a hundred kilometers away. Real hell hounds – gouka inugami!”

“A hundred?” Sakumo froze. “Wait… _gouka_ _inugami?_ Just how would you even know what a gouka inugami smells like?”

Tsume shrugged and let the chakra disperse from her nose. Her nose throbbed and stung. She felt exhausted and ready to sleep for a month. “They kinda smell like week-dead dogs smothered in volcanic ash and sulfur. It’s one of Aunt Natsumi’s favorite summons. She said it’s reserved only for the most extreme situations because they’re really hard to control, and have a tendency to consume the soul of their summoner if the summoner shows the smallest hint of fear. Well, they have a tendency to go after _anything_ that smells of fear, which is what makes them really hard to control, I guess.” She frowned in thought as Sakumo stared. “We took them on a picnic, once, in the Forest of Death. They ate some slugs, and didn’t like how they tasted, and then romped a little bit with the tigers.”

Sakumo scratched his head. “The Hokage wasn’t kidding when he said your aunt was a one-woman army with her summons. I take it that she’s accompanying the Uchiha – good, we’ll need all the fire power we can get. Literally, I guess, given the Uchiha’s inclination for kaiten jutsu. Speaking of gouka inugami, do you have any carrots?”

Tsume riffled through her pockets, because she had been sneaking treats to Juubi whenever she thought that Danzo wasn’t watching. “Yeah. Do gouka inugami like carrots?”

“Well, I don’t know about the gouka inugami, but I’ve got to get Juubi to hold still for Kyou to patch him up. Juubi’s the only one who can haul Danzo’s ass back to the train without getting hurt, since Danzo doesn’t like to be carried by anyone with two legs.” As Sakumo straightened upward, Tsume leaned to the side to see Danzo commanding Kyou to give _him_ the first aid supplies.

“You heavy-handed oaf, I’ll patch myself up. Go take care of Tsume’s nose, because we need _that_ more than my leg.”

“Damn Shimura,” Kyou muttered as he stomped over to Tsume. “I’m _sick_ and _tired_ of dealing with an entire clan of sadomasochistic bastards.”

Danzo twitched. “ _What_ was _that_ , medic?”

Tsume patted Sakumo’s knee for his attention. “Why do we call Danzo the War Hawk? I thought hawks are supposed to be calm, patient predators.”

“Hmm? Probably because he inspires enough fear in people without being called something more apt… like Juubi.”

“I can _hear_ you two!”

Sakumo stuck his tongue out at Danzo. “And just what to you intend to do about it, Captain? Sic your horse on me? Good, it’ll just make it easier for me to catch Juubi.”

oOoOoOo

Ten Uchiha, half from the already-strapped police force, gathered up their gear and supplies in preparation for leaving Konoha. The Fire Daimyo had called on the Hokage and all available resources a month ago to deal with the conflicts that were approaching too close to the Capital, and even took the life of the Daimyo’s first son, and he hadn’t felt comfortable with just the Fire Guardians and his military forces. Konoha was currently protected by the oldest and youngest of the ninja, and a civilian population determined to help guard their home. Konoha’s main forces were split, each led by a Sannin and paired with forces of their allies, to take out the remaining leaders of the Second Shinobi World War and crush the opposition once and for all.

But Konoha didn’t lose sight of the little details amidst the big picture. The wounded of Konoha and her allies had asked for help with protecting their train, and Konoha – and the Uchiha especially – took their duty to protect the most vulnerable very seriously. It was something that the Second Hokage had very carefully instilled in his students, and Uchiha Kagami, the stalwart Head of Internal Affairs, was determined to live and die by the teachings of his old sensei.

It was midnight by the time Kagami finished gathering his own supplies (weapons, snacks and two water canteens, his heart pills, spare toilet paper – Kagami firmly believed only in the essentials, but life was rough enough without the luxury of extra-soft), and preparing what he considered would be a _somewhat_ competent team. He was working with a very abrupt deadline, and had given his team less than four hours to prepare upon receiving the missive from the Hokage’s secretary. His chosen team was an eclectic mix of (much) older and younger Uchiha, retired and inexperienced, neurotic and tranquil.

That was fine. Kagami like variety; it was more entertaining that way.

They were silent as they slipped through the streets, joining all together beside the main entrance, to await the opening of the massive gates so that they could slip through one-by-one. It would be the last time the gates would open – with the absence of the ten Uchiha, their forces would be too thin to guard open gates. They would be sealed shut, and only the returning forces with the wagon train, or the return of the Hokage himself, could reopen the gates.

Quiet footsteps approached them, and all eyes turned to face the newcomer.

And then all but two men instantly looked elsewhere.

“Well,” Kagami’s voice was a slow drawl, and he even clapped his hands in a genuine show of appreciation. “I see you’ve kept the traditional Inuzuka battle garb after all these years.” He had seen it all before, albeit more than three decades ago. Oh, and what a glorious sight it had been to a hormonal, adolescent virgin. He owed Senju Tobirama many thanks for such. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Natsumi-san?”

Inuzuka fangs flashed white as she stepped into the pool of light given by the single overhead lamp. The beads, bangles, feathers, ribbons and bells woven into her long tangled silver locks clinked together as she tossed her head. “I’m going with you.” Her eyes were outlined in crimson, which only served to highlight the thick, raised scar that bisected her nose and forehead. Crimson was also smeared on her cheeks and jowls, and across her shattered forehead. She looked like a youki drenched in blood.

Kagami shook his head. “I cannot give authorization to permit such. Your remaining presence is very important for the safety and wellbeing of our Village.” He was the single strongest shinobi in active duty that still remained in Konoha – the only reason he hadn’t been called out with the Hokage was because of his heart. Natsumi was the single strongest ninja, retired or active, and Konoha couldn’t afford her absence.

Natsumi crossed her arms, finger-painted with intricate swirls of crimson red. She took a step forward, and the Uchiha at his back retreated a step. Kagami was annoyed. “First of all, I’m not the only retired Inuzuka clanswoman who packs a real mean punch. Bashira is still around and has gotten fat and lazy in _her_ retirement, so she could use some light exercise with battling invading enemies. I even got her to sign my bear summon, just in case Konoha needs extra firepower, because I don’t think the horses will quite cut it.” Aunt Natsumi wagged her finger, still keeping her arms crossed. “Second of all, Inuzuka don’t _need_ an authorization – it’s in our clan treaty. And even if such a clause didn’t exist, I still wouldn’t be stopped. Hatake attached a P.S. to his missive that my great-niece is alive. With the deaths of my sister and Hidarime, that makes Tsume the clan head. I will do whatever it takes to protect her. The alpha keeps the pack together; we revolve around her – or did, before my sister _impounded_ us behind these walls. I fear that the death of the alpha will be the death of the pack. And the death of the pack would be a tragic loss for Konoha – so, see?” She grinned, although it was more of a flash of her teeth – the easier to rip out someone’s throat, which she had demonstrated once before. “I’m really _also_ doing this for the safety and wellbeing of Konohagakure.”

Kagami studied her with his Sharingan. Natsumi had always made a distinction between _pack_ and _clan_ ; she just never bothered to share what, exactly, that distinction was. He suspected that it boiled down to the pack (what Inuzuka once were, and never should’ve stopped being), and clan (what village life had turned everyone into). Kagami’s Will of Fire burned strong for _all_ of Konoha, regardless of clan or civilian. Besides, there were only so many arguments he overheard between Tobirama and Natsumi before he realized that such arguments ended in angry sex, and would have to duck and run away with the rest of his team. Angry outdoors sex. There was a reason why Tobirama created so many training grounds. “Surely, Tsume can’t be the _last_ of the alphas.”

“When the war started four years ago, the clan had eight viable alphas who had graduated the Academy. Seven have since been killed in action. I even counted the KIA notices last week to double-check.”

“You didn’t count yourself.”

Natsumi tucked her chin down and tilted her head, like a cornered animal that was about to lunge. “I’ve always considered the loss of my children a sign from the gods that I am not suitable to hold the title of alpha.”

The night air was cool, but it didn’t seem to affect Inuzuka Natsumi. Kagami supposed that she had smeared herself with enough body paint that it qualified as an insulating layer. His eyes kept drifting back to the aquatic animals that she had painted across her chest. “Why do you have the otters upside down?” he asked, ignoring the impatient murmurs and shuffling feet from his clanspeople. He had seen her battle paints before, although the last time had been about, oh, fifteen-ish years ago, before she declared her retirement. The otters weren’t normally upside-down.

“Have you ever tried painting on your chest when you can’t really see what you’re doing?” Natsumi pulled on her skin as she peered downward, her mood shifting to petulant. “The whales are easy to do, but the otters have always been a bit more tricky, and I didn’t have my usual assistant at hand to do it for me. Besides, I was working on _your_ stupid time limit, _and_ I still had to find a babysitter for Kakashi and Kuromaru.”

“Did you find one?” He truly hoped that she found the babysitter _before_ putting on the traditional battle garb. Sakumo’s son was going to have more than enough personal issues in life just from being raised by wolves without the added experience of tonight.

“Sure. Eight of them, in fact. I’d trust Pakkun with my life. I tried to talk Bashira into taking care of Kakashi, but she refused. She said it’s because she wanted the dragon summon and not the bear summon, so it was probably just to spite me, the bitch.”

Kagami set his hands on his hips and deliberately dragged his gaze up and down her body. Natsumi wore leather sandals on her feet, an old fur-lined loin cloth that was held in place by a studded belt, and a multicolored scarf that kept her hair out of her face. She rested her weapon one-handed on the ground – a massive battle ax, the fire-hardened wooden handle reinforced but well-worn, and the metal recently polished and oiled. Her breasts hung long and heavy, her torso was striped silver from stretch marks, and there was a roll of loose skin hanging from her abdomen –the traditional hallmarks of pregnancies that she wore without shame. She also brought a knapsack that was stuffed with summon scrolls.

Alas, Natsumi didn’t have the tightly-corded musculature Kagami remembered from his youth… but then again, _he_ didn’t have his, either. He was forty-six years old now, and she had been over fifty years old in his youth, _and_ she had looked marvelous back then. It was clear to him who had aged better. Rumor had it that the sire of Shinzou and Natsumi had been an Uzumaki. Kagami figured there had to be a grain of truth somewhere for the two women to have such sustained vitality long past the typical point where the wear and tear of the shinobi lifestyle made itself known to the fragile human body. “I think you’ve made your point. But for the sake of my companions, I _must_ insist that you bind your breasts.”

Natsumi angrily squinted at the Uchiha behind him. “Why? Don’t tell me they’ve never seen tits before in their life.” She knew that Kagami wasn’t bothered by her half-nudity; years of her casual exhibitionism around Team Tobirama had done wonders in forging his blasé attitude.

“Not ones that hang _that_ far down,” Daimaru muttered.

“I have,” Uncle Obito volunteered, raising his hand in the air. Then he said, “Ow!” when his wife side-kicked him in the shin.

“I’m also thinking,” Kagami raised his voice to drown out the protests of his clanspeople, “that wearing the bindings would be beneficial for _you_. Surely, it can’t be very comfortable to run without support. My wife has hinted towards such over the years.”

“Yeah,” said Ringo. “Besides, you might take someone’s eye out with those nipple piercings.”

Natsumi bared her teeth again. “They aren’t the _only_ piercings I have.”

His clan’s silence, broken only by a distant hooting owl somewhere in the forest, was uncomfortable. The only visible piercings had already been identified by Ringo. The (very small) part of Natsumi’s body that hidden from view by the loincloth seemed like a rather uncomfortable place to have a piercing. Which Kagami _knew_ existed – had even received quite the lecture from Natsumi on how to talk to his wife-to-be, Shimura Fumiko, about such, that it was his responsibility to ensure that his beloved would never have cause to be disappointed in how well he pleasured her, and how the piercing would make things easier on that front. Kagami was twenty years old and had tried to disappear into the ground, realizing that there was still some part of him that was quite capable of getting embarrassed by Natsumi despite a decade of exposure. That was enough for _Danzo_ to get an earful from Natsumi on how Danzo should appreciate the idea of his sister not being deprived of a good orgasm, so he should do Fumiko and Kagami a favor, and tell her about intimate piercings.

(Danzo never did talk to his half-sister about the topic, preferring instead to do a very long mission in the Land of Frost, far away from Natsumi, when the wedding took place. Fumiko never forgave Danzo of this slight, nor did she get the piercing, and Kagami was quite able to please her just fine without the use of such, thankyouverymuchNatsumi.)

Not for the first time, Kagami found himself praying to his dead sensei. _Yes, thank you so very much for that mind-breaking experience of being your apprentices, Hokage-sama. You have forever stunted my ability to be shocked._ On the bright side, at least he didn’t share in the dubious honor of being Tobirama’s favorite.

Kagami took a deep breath to rebalance his center. “We’ll try very hard not to get in your way if you agree to wear the breast bindings.”

“Damn things will just cover up my artwork. Why would I want to do that?”

“There’s nothing stopping you from ripping the bindings off while you run screaming like a rabid Amazon at the enemy. But, in the meantime, I ask that you cover up as a favor. Mikoto, do you have spares? Ah, good, thank you.” He held the white bindings out to Natsumi, gratefully feeling like he was holding the flag of surrender instead of his teenaged daughter’s underwear. By the way Natsumi eyed the bindings, she probably felt the same (minus the gratefulness).

She snatched the bindings just as the massive gates creaked open. “Fine.” Then she barred her teeth. “I’ll need a hand getting these on.”

Kagami held up his hands in surrender and backed up a step. “My wife would be the first to tell you that I’m only talented in removing them. Mikoto, if you would.”

Mikoto, looking young and unsure of herself, stepped forward. Natsumi cupped her breasts and held them in place, unabashed, as Mikoto reluctantly wrapped the bindings around her torso. When finished, Natsumi grinned and ruffled Mikoto’s fine hair. “Gosh, you’re cute!” She squealed as she even pinched one of Mikoto’s cheeks. “Little Kagami-chan’s daughter is all grown up and off to bloody her tanto! My, how the years have flown! You’re, what, fifteen now?”

Kagami sighed as he thought of Natsumi’s behaviors in the last fifteen years, after she finally retired from active duty. _This_ was the woman he had known while the Second was alive. “I’ve always known that crazed persona you’ve cultivated over the years was just a cover-up.”

“Wait.” Kagami glanced over his shoulder at Fugaku, who looked flummoxed. “You mean being mostly naked and covered in paint _isn’t_ Inuzuka Natsumi going off the deep end?”

Natsumi growled, which Kagami ignored as he patted Fugaku’s shoulder in sympathy. “She probably went off the deep end long before _I_ was born, but you’ll find a cold rationality with her methods of madness. But in this? I’m afraid what you’re seeing is the pure, undiluted form of the Inuzuka before Konoha demanded that they become civilized and wear clothes.” He heard Natsumi spit in displeasure at the mention of wearing clothes. “Now, just imagine her sixty years younger, multiply that by a hundred other naked, painted Inuzuka clanswomen, and you can easily see why they were one of the most intimidating clans to ever roam the countryside.”

Kagami also half-suspected that the First Hokage really just wanted the Inuzuka clan to join Konoha so he could safely ogle the women without being on the battlefield, where such inattention could otherwise get him killed. That backfired, of course, because the other clans had demanded that the Inuzuka women revamp their wardrobe to better suit a more conservative society.

Uncle Obito, who had been rescued along with other children from slavers when he was four years old by a twenty-five year-old Natsumi (although the only thing Natsumi really did during the rescue was drop a whale on the slavers’ ship, since the Uchiha and Senju did most of the work in rescuing said children), sighed wistfully. “It was a glorious sight,” he said.

Fugaku’s face went red and his eyes widened in fear. Apparently, he had an active imagination. “Er. But does she _really_ have to come? We’re wasting enough time on this old woman as it is!”

Kagami had seen enough sparring between Natsumi and the Second to know that age wasn’t going to be a factor with her abilities. From what he was seeing oh so vividly right now, Natsumi wasn’t hindered by a bent spine or arthritis. And no doubt her heart was in a far better shape than Kagami’s, after he survived the same bout of rheumatic fever three years ago that killed his mother and his two eldest children.

His poor knees envied Natsumi and her damnable Uzumaki genes. “ _I’m_ not stopping her.” He allowed his Sharingan to fade.

Fugaku’s gaze flickered behind to Natsumi, and then back to Kagami. “There’s ten of us, and we all have the Sharingan. We can stop her.” He dropped his voice into a whisper. “Inuzuka Tsume is intolerable enough without her getting any more ideas from her crazy aunt.”

Natsumi cackled. “You _couldn’t_ stop me if you tried! Unfortunately, I can’t track anymore, so I have to have someone guide me to this here wagon train. I don’t need all ten of you for that, though. Just one, and only for tracking, so I’ll break your kneecaps and strap you to my back as a human compass if I have to.”

“I’d go, willingly,” Uncle Obito volunteered eagerly, before his wife kicked him in the shin again. “Ow.”

“Assault, battery, _and_ abduction of a Konoha citizen. You are an example to all fine, upstanding citizens. So how do _you_ and _what army_ intend to achieve this?” Fugaku demanded as Kagami palmed his face in exasperation.

Kagami sensed the shift in his clan – killing intent suddenly flared; Mikoto swore and stumbled backwards into him. Kagami turned back to Natsumi, and then dropped his hand down to Mikoto's shoulder to steady her as his Sharingan reactivated. They were surrounded by eyes that burned like embers in the darkness. Lots of eyes. _Hundreds._ One such pair of eyes stalked forward and emerged like a blot of shadows from the darkness. Flames sizzled at the paws and embers floated off the nearly-invisible body. The entire form flickered like heat waves rising from the desert’s floor. Natsumi affectionately traced the head of the shadow-creature, red flaring beneath her hands like hot coals fanned under a wash of fresh air. She grinned.

“This army,” she whispered. “I walked through hell to obtain the gouka inugami summon some fifteen years ago – literally. And it damn near killed me. In fact, it forced me into an early retirement. The only downside is that the gouka inugami only track a person whose blood you give them, and they track to kill. I can’t exactly use them to hunt down the very person I want back, _alive_.” 

It seemed very apropos that a woman who had been known as the Hell Hound would go and get herself a summon of the very same. And was Kagami really, truly, surprised?

Eh, not really. This was exactly the kind of Inuzuka shenanigans _he_ had to deal with when he was a teenager, and now it was time to pass the torch onto someone else. Like his future son-in-law, for example. It wasn’t like he had any personal or professional distaste against Fugaku, as a man or as an Uchiha, or even as a distant cousin. It was simply that no one would ever be good enough for Kagami’s darling daughter.

_No one._

Kagami turned back to Fugaku. Kagami didn’t have the strength to forbid Natsumi’s leave from Konoha – not even with nine Uchiha backing him up. It was much wiser to simply point Natsumi at their enemies and let her wipe them out before they got to Konoha. “Well, there you have it. An entire army of cursed hell hounds, _including_ its general. Sounds to me like a deal too good to pass up, especially if we situate them between us and the enemies.”

Fugaku’s face was pale. He nodded in agreement with a jerk of his head, although it might’ve also been a muscle spasm in his neck.

Kagami didn’t even look behind as he took the lead, signaling to everyone that it was time to move. And because his future son-in-law was going to inherit leadership of the Uchiha clan, he felt it only fair to warn Fugaku. “Oh, and try not to challenge her anymore like that, Fugaku. The only man who’s ever been alpha enough to take on Natsumi was Senju Tobirama.”

oOoOoOo

The wagons had been circled into a tight spiral, with the worst of the wounded in the very center by the time Tsume and her companions returned. Armed samurai ringed the perimeters in their guard formation. Mifune had made the executive decision that the wagon train would await the arrival of their Konoha reinforcements. Kurama Tsubaki, who had grown so weak during the war that she couldn’t sit upright and thus had to be carried on a pallet to the center of the wagon train’s spiral, wove an elaborate genjutsu around the perimeters of the camp that hid them from view and would give outsiders who wander too close a sense of boredom that discouraged further investigation. Sakumo used a complicated doton jutsu after being taught by Danzo to obliterate the wagon train’s trail for the last three kilometers (he had to rest twice and use chakra pills in order to cover the distance), and then raised a large stone barrier within the Kurama genjustu to surround the camp. Samurai and ninja were stationed at the top of stone barrier, armed and ready to kill anyone who would attempt to climb it if they managed to break through the Kurama genjutsu.

“Ummm, I can explain,” Tsume told Kushina and Kokoro the moment that Sakumo more-or-less dumped her inside their shared wagon, and then left to _discuss_ things with Danzo. Tsume was grateful that Sakumo wasn’t going to talk to her just yet, not when she was still horrendously embarrassed that he had seen everything. 

“You look like you got drop-kicked off a cliff,” Kokoro declared uncharitably.

“It was more of an explosion than a drop-kick,” Tsume muttered, wanting to find a deep hole to crawl into and sleep forever. “But, like I said, I can explain.” As least she wasn’t hurting too badly. One of the wounded shinobi who had seen them return, a man who had burns covering 40% of his body, had taken such pity upon her injuries that he had graciously donated some of his own morphine, which Kyou approved but only allowed Tsume a half-dose. Tsume actually felt rather giddy, all things considering. She was also really dizzy and half-nauseous, but she was willing to blame that on blood loss.

Kushina and Kokoro stared with wide eyes. “Can you, now?” Kokoro finally said as she cocked one eyebrow upward. Kokoro was propped upright against burlap bags of horse grain, so she could fold her legs at the knees and not fall over. Their wagon was doing double duty, hauling the grain and the girls. Tsume still wore Sakumo’s shirt, stained with her blood, and the med nin hadn’t wasted any chakra to heal the lurid bruises covering her face, the hand-shaped bruises on her neck, or the bite marks. Although, priorities being what they were, Tsume’s nose had been thoroughly healed.

Kushina slowly nodded her head. “Yes. Do tell. And make it good, because you’ve got a lot to explain for _this_.” She withdrew Tsume’s bloody forehead protector from her pocket. Her knuckles were white as she clenched the metal. “Because after you’re done explaining, _we_ have some explanations to give _you_.”

Tsume’s mind went immediately to her worst worry. They were kicking her off the team! Wait – could they do that without Sakumo’s permission? She was always understood that the teams were more like a benevolent dictatorship, and not a democracy where teammates could vote. Tsume shifted her weight amidst the four ninken that piled around her, all unwilling to leave her alone – not that she could blame them. She felt slightly better with the solid mass of Ichi separating her from Kokoro and Kushina as her friends simmered in anger, grief, and jealousy.

The truth was, she _couldn’t_ explain it all. Events were still too tightly wrapped up in that S-class Black Ops Danzo pulled her from, which meant that she would have to be vague and evasive, and that just wasn’t going to go over well with Kokoro.

Kokoro’s smell was the most open and welcoming than it had been since they met in the main camp, but that didn’t say much. Still, Tsume couldn’t lose this opportunity. She was tired of Kokoro’s cold shoulder, of Kushina having to balance the two friends without offending either. Tsume didn’t want to be stuck on a team where one friend was more of an enemy and the other friend was a long-suffering middleman. If Tsume played her hand just right… she’d have to be very ninja about this. _Think of it as another undercover assignment._ “I could smell them coming,” she began. “There were forty-two of them, and not all the scents were unfamiliar to me. I told Danzo, and he pinpointed their location, but they were traveling underground to the wagon train. Danzo said that they had to be stopped.”

Tsume rubbed her cast. The lacerations – old and new – in her left arm would need to be stitched again once the camp was settled, but no one had done anything about her right arm – it was already in a cast, the broken bones hadn’t shifted out of place and it wasn’t worse for wear. She still had horrible muscle spasms that worsened whenever she tried to send her own healing chakra through it, and her scalp ached like a solid throb, and so did her throat and pelvis. “He told me to go back to the train and get Sakumo. He told me to stay out of the fighting.”

“Well,” said Kokoro lightly, “that was Danzo’s first mistake, to order you around like a _dog_.”

Tsume figured that was sarcasm. She hoped it was sarcasm. It was hard to tell when her head felt kinda fuzzy. Shame that she had been anemic even before the wagon train left for Konoha. “I started to, really, but then I realized I was leaving my comrade behind. Grandmother’s ninken are experienced and battle-hardened, and Danzo was going up alone against forty-two Iwa nin! He really needed their assistance! And, naturally, I have to go where Ichi goes.”

“You’re just a genin,” Kushina said, patient but rebuking. “And your arms aren’t in any shape for fighting. I know you can’t be scared like the rest of us, but it’s hard to fight the enemy when you’re also trying to protect your weaker companions.”

Her stomach suddenly sinking, Tsume wondered if that was what Kushina and Minato had secretly thought when she had to be carted around because of her chakra exhaustion. Or how Kushina and Kokoro in general felt about Tsume. “You girls don’t understand.” She was miserable and now her head was hurting from thinking too hard. “Danzo _rescued_ me. He rescued me from the very same Iwa nin that he was going up against and I… I couldn’t repay that by just abandoning him.”

“Sakumo-sensei and the others were able to get there in time,” Kokoro replied, her face set. “I heard one of the samurai say that we didn’t suffer any losses on our side, and that Danzo was the only one who was severely injured.”

“That’s not true. Danzo told me that he would’ve been killed if I hadn’t shown up.”

“Danzo will just tell you anything to make you feel better.”

Kushina shook her head. “No, Kokoro-chan. Danzo-sensei is rough and mean, and he doesn’t tell anyone false platitudes to make them feel better. Not even to Tsume-chan. Trust me on this – I _know_.” She looked very sadly at Tsume. “He tried to be nice to me, back at the cave after you had passed out with that spine in your hand, and he wasn’t very good at it.” 

Tsume shifted her feet from under Ichi. They were beginning to get really warm. She still had dried blood on her toes. Where could a girl get a shower around here? “Well, I did try to write help on the metal plate, but it wasn’t readable. I thought that maybe adding more blood would make Sakumo react faster.”

Kokoro slapped the palms of her hands against the wooden slates of the wagon floor. “It was _drenched_ , Tsume!” She ignored Ichi’s snarling growl as he raised his head. And really, she didn’t bleed on the forehead protector _nearly_ as much as Daisuke had made her bleed. “We figured you’d only give up your _sister’s_ protector if you were _dead_! How could you do that? Never mind – I know how you can do that. You were being _impulsive_ again. You weren’t thinking – you _never_ think. Not about yourself, and especially not about others.”

Tsume picked at her toenails, flaking off the blood. It belonged to Daisuke. Well, most of it did. Some of it was also hers... Okay, a lot of the blood was also hers. Maybe it was a fifty-fifty mix. She scrubbed her toes with the hanging hem of Oyubi’s pants leg. “I just wanted to help,” she said miserably.

Kushina flailed her arms. “That’s enough! Kokoro, we agreed that Tsume had to explain herself, but she can’t when you keep interrupting. Tsume, why does Ichi keep growling at us?”

Tsume patted Ichi’s head, trying to exude _calm_ for the dogs. She subtly pressed her hand against her chest – her heart pounding, but it wasn’t because she was scared. “It’s okay,” she told him, “Kokoro-chan isn’t that horrible man.”

Kushina eyed Ichi. “What horrible man?” Her expression morphed into horror then, and the scent of fear spiked. “Wait – you said earlier that not all the scents were unfamiliar, and that… and that Danzo-sensei had rescued you from the same men he was going after.” Kushina burst into tears. “Oh, Tsume, how _could_ you go back to them?”

Kokoro’s eyes darted between Tsume and Kushina. “Is this about the thing that you wouldn’t tell me because Tsume had to be the one to say tell me?”

Tsume picked at Ni’s tail as her heart sunk further down – Kushina _knew_. Tsume didn’t know how, so Danzo must’ve said something back at the cave. She hurried to speak, trying to distract her own thoughts and Kushina. “The ninken are made for war, just like Juubi. So I sent Shi off with my message, I armed the rest of us with blast tags, and we went after Danzo. Ichi was actually really good at dodging the enemies. We ambushed the Iwa nin before they knew we were there. Danzo was wounded, and there was a nin who had lots of doton jutsu. He…” She inspected Shi’s paws; they were bloody and bruised. Poor Shi, he had run so far and so hard to get help just like her alpha had ordered. “Ichi and I got knocked into a ravine, separated from Danzo. The nin with the doton jutsu, Danzo said he was the leader. He followed us down.”

Both of her friends were quiet, waiting for Tsume to continue. Tsume tried ignoring their scents, which told her more than what their faces could. She picked the burrs out of Shi’s fur. “Sakumo-sensei killed him though,” she said finally, trying very hard not to remember the shattered look on Sakumo’s face when she gave him the explosive tags, “and that was the end of the fighting.”

“What happened,” Kokoro asked, “between the man following you down into the ravine, and Sakumo-sensei killing him?”

Tsume tugged at Ni’s fur, trying to break off the dirty clumps. It looked like blood was making the clumps stick. “Nothing _new_. Nothing I couldn’t handle – I wouldn’t be alive right now if I couldn’t. Why do you have to have _all_ the details?” Tsume was embarrassed about telling them how she had planned a suicide explosion with her blast tags. She didn’t want to see Sakumo’s expression on their faces either.

She never wanted to see that expression again.

Why was it so easy to remember what horrified her, and yet so hard to remember the sound of Hidarime’s laughter? It wasn’t fair!

Kokoro tightened her hands into fists. “Tsume, you didn’t tell me the truth the last time. It’s one thing to say sorry, that information is classified, because I can respect that as one Konoha kunoichi to another. It’s another to flat-out _lie_ to me. If you aren’t truthful this time, it’s over between us. I mean it. I can’t deal with my disability and try to manage yours at the same time.”

That wasn’t fair either. Tsume dealt just fine with her brain injury without any help from anyone! Tsume hunched as she looked at Kokoro, whose lips were pressed together in a determined line. Then she looked at Kushina, whose face was wet and blotchy already. She tried to ignore the anger simmering just below the surface – an anger that never went away after she confronted Grandmother; an anger that slowly grew, like a cancer spreading through her body.

She chose this. In the end, when it came down to the shallow grave that Grandmother had promised her, and the life of brutality that Orochimaru warned her about, Tsume ultimately chose the life of brutality. Even if she didn’t know what exactly the brutality meant, it had still been _her_ choice. By now, though, she wondered if maybe the shallow grave wasn’t such a bad offer. Especially since she was pretty sure she could dig her way out of a shallow grave.

“Remember when I wrote you those letters, about how I was going off on a mission for Grandmother?”

“Yes. Are you trying to change the subject, or trying to talk to me this time?”

Tsume stiffly traced the grains in the floorboards with the nails of her left fingers. She couldn’t be a lonely spook, like Danzo described. She was an Inuzuka – companionship was her lifeblood. She _needed_ Kokoro and Kushina, because they were her friends. Kokoro and Kushina were _hers_. Also, her nose told her that no one was in listening range, so she could technically get away with this. “I can’t tell you why it happened or who made it happen, or what I was supposed to do, and you both never heard anything, especially from me, because _it never happened._ Remember: plausible deniability!” If Danzo ever found out, she’d just tell him it was the morphine. Her head was buzzing delightfully at the same level it throbbed, and her heart raced in her chest like she had seven cups of coffee. She could definitely, honestly, and absolutely say that she wasn’t in the best state to maintain secrecy, especially when it came to the peer pressure of her two best friends.

Kokoro grunted and crossed her arms. “Okay. So what is this absolutely nothing that never happened that you wouldn’t ever tell us, and therefore we never heard and will deny to the end of our days?”

“Grandmother sold me to a brothel near Iwa four months ago for a thousand ryou.”

The silence was deafening.

Not nearly as deafening as Kushina’s shriek of outrage when she managed to catch her breath. “I’LL KILL HER!”

“She’s already dead,” Kokoro said, stuffing a finger in her ear and turning away with a wince.

“I’LL BRING HER BACK SOMEHOW AND KILL HER AGAIN!”

Tsume hunched with the ninken. “Ow. My ears.”

Kushina crawled over Ichi and threw her arms around Tsume. Red hair curtained Tsume’s vision. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again! I mean it – Kokoro, where did I put those ropes?”

“Like I said,” Tsume said, trying to ignore the fresh waves of pain from Kushina clutching her arms, “nothing _new_ happened between Daisuke and me in the ravine. He recognized me from the brothel – he paid really good money to win my auction – and, well, it didn’t hurt as much as the last times. And Sakumo killed him too, so all’s well that ends well.” She tried smiling, just in case Kokoro could see.

Kushina sobbed into the nape of Tsume’s neck. Tsume concentrated on Kokoro’s scent since she still couldn’t see through Kushina’s hair.

“For you? I suppose it would end well. Rape is about power, about preying on another person’s vulnerability and forcing _fear_ into them.” Kokoro stank of bitterness. “Tsume doesn’t _know_ what fear is. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be _paralyzed_ with uncertainty and terror, of being encumbered by a reality where nightmares are _real_. Tsume is invulnerable. No man, no creature, no _god_ is ever going to have that level of power over her, so yeah, I suppose that all’s well that ends well.”

Tsume considered her next words very carefully. “Are you disappointed that the bloody forehead protector was just a false alarm?”

_That_ shifted Kokoro’s scent just as Kushina jerked away from Tsume. “How can you say that?” Kushina demanded, looming in Tsume’s vision. “Kokoro-chan kept crying, and said that she’d give anything to have you back!”

“How am I supposed to know that?” Tsume demanded. “Kokoro smells like she hates me!”

“I don’t—! I…” Kokoro’s bottom lip trembled, and she raised her chin defiantly. “I do hate you, actually. But I hate everyone right now. I hate not being able to move. I hate being trapped in one spot. I hate having to rely on other people. I hate wearing _diapers_ and I hate needing someone help me change them. I hate that everyone was focused on bringing Kushina back, and wouldn’t tell me anything when I was stuck to a cot next to _your_ grandmother for a _week_!”

Oh, that was _mean_. Tsume would’ve considered that a punishment reserved only for traitors, being stuck for a week with a cranky, wounded, bitter Grandmother, with no way to escape. She’d hate everyone and everything too, even without the right brain parts to hate!

Kokoro rubbed at her eyes just as she started crying. “And… I hate that as soon as you and Kushina came back, all anyone did was talk about you and Kushina, just like I knew they would, and I was _left_ by myself, in that bed, completely unable to do anything still, and I was getting left behind just like I knew I would be. I’m sorry, Tsume, but right now, I hate everyone! I even… I even hate myself.”

Kushina whimpered. “Oh, why didn’t you ever tell us?” She scrambled over Ichi to hug Kokoro. “I’d probably feel the same way as you!”

Ichi, with the air of someone who was tired but resigned to being trampled, moaned as he scooted out of the way so Tsume could follow Kushina’s example. Tsume couldn’t wrap her right arm around Kokoro as she sat on the opposite side from Kushina, but she leaned over and rested her head against Kokoro’s shoulder. Tsume wondered about hatred and fear, and thought about the void that Orochimaru had warned her about. “Danzo once told me that people hate what they fear.” Danzo’s words always seemed easier to remember than other people’s. “I… I think, Kokoro, that you don’t _really_ hate anyone. I think you’re just awfully scared.”

“I know,” Kokoro said, choking and rubbing her watery eyes. “I _am_ scared. I’m scared because I can‘t keep up with either of you anymore, and you’ll just leave me behind, and you’re my only friends in the world.”

Tsume knew the heartache of loneliness. And she figured that this was just as good a time as any to enter the next phase of the newly-named Operation Legs. “Can you still use chakra in your feet?”

Kokoro sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. “Yeah. It’s the only way I can even feel my feet in the first place. Otherwise it’s like there’s _nothing_ past my waist.”

“Oh, good. Because I inherited four ninken, see, but I still have Kuromaru back at home, so I figured that maybe you wouldn’t mind if I gave you San.” When Kokoro’s scent shifted from bitterness to curiosity, Tsume began happily babbling. “See, I thought maybe you could steer yourself around in a wheelchair with chakra strings like a Suna puppeteer, but Kushina said the wheelchair would get stuck in the trees. So I figured, hey, the ninken can go wherever any of us can go, and – as I _just_ readily demonstrated today – they can fight _and_ help keep you mobile and safe in a battle. And it was so cool, because first Ichi was dashing _here_ , and then he was snarling at an enemy while I was dropping blast tags _there_ , and then we were sliding under Juubi’s belly. It’s like being a samurai on a horse, except you’d be a kunoichi on a ninken. This could really work for you, Kokoro!”

The curiosity was bubbling with happiness. Tsume giggled and buried her nose against Kokoro’s shoulder. She wasn’t going to ask Kokoro about the genjutsu of Orochimaru; she’d just forget about it instead. It shouldn’t be hard – she had forgotten far worse in her life already. She’d forgotten better things, too. As long as she had the love and support of her friend, she would forget about the flaws. Forgiveness came very easily if you couldn’t remember _why_ you needed to forgive.

“It’ll be a lot of work,” Kokoro said softly, trying to keep her voice even and hesitant. “I’m not an Inuzuka, so I can’t speak their language.”

“I promise to train you! And I bet Sakumo-sensei will also help. He’d probably help a lot more than me, because he’s a jounin who’s supposed to be a teacher, right? I’ll go ask him right now!”

And then Tsume darted out of the wagon, tripping over the wagon’s tailgate and falling over the other side with a loud thud. “Ow!” She hadn’t realized how unsteady on her feet the morphine made her.

Kushina peered over the tailgate as San and Shi crowded around her to also look down at their alpha mistress. They gave her hopeful tail wags. “Maybe we should get you all washed up and in clean clothes first, Tsume-chan. You might frighten the samurai.” Tsume hurt too much to move though, as she focused on trying to breathe. There was only so much that the morphine could do.

oOoOoOo

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the clouds were just sparse enough to be delightful, the wind was gentle, and the temperature wasn’t too cold, despite being winter. The rock that Fugaku shared with Mikoto was warm and flat enough to be comfortable, and if he timed it just right, he _might_ be able to hold her hand. Ah, the glories and wonders of nature – hark, was that a robin, this late in the season? Well, they did like to winterize in Fire.

“ _hrk_!”

No, not a robin. Perhaps a meadowlark? Which, apparently, happened to be a delicacy for gouka inugami. Alas, poor meadowlark, your cheerful birdsong will be missed.

“Idon’twannadieIdon’twannadie _blrrrk!_ ”

Fugaku glanced over at his companions. His two younger brothers, thirteen-year-old twins named Ringo and Daimaru (a rather unfortunate combination, but Father had been on a mission when Mother had to have an emergency C-section, so Fugaku suspected that the morphine following the surgery had a great deal of influence in her decision to forever compare the twins to apples and oranges), were still slowly eating their rations as they discussed the free entertainment.

“I think it’s just a genjutsu,” Ringo firmly told Daimaru.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!”

“No way, they move way too naturally to be genjutsu.”

“Mercy! Mercy!” _Shhhhink_.

“And just _how_ do you know what they would look like when they’re moving?”

“Because Shimura Akane showed me hers last week when I beat her in taijutsu.”

“ _Ihavethreeyoungchildrenjghsjabg—”_

“Dude. You got _Akane_ to flash her tits at you? What were they like?”

“Aa. Let’s just say she doesn’t pad _anything._ ”

Okay, this was _clearly_ a conversation Fugaku had best forget ever hearing, and the sooner, the better, _especially_ when it involved Kagami’s fifteen year old niece (by marriage). He turned his attention to Kagami, who was casually lounging face-up in the grass beside the rock, cloud watching with a stalk of wild oats stuck between his teeth. Yakumi, having firmly planted himself on the other side of the rock where he couldn’t see anything, was redoing his topknot for the third time and muttering about how it was still crooked.

“Go back to the bowels of hell where you came from, you evil demon witch – _glrrrbl_ —”

Obito, who graciously came out of retirement along with his wife, Nishi, on Kagami’s request for this mission, was riffling through the Bingo Book. He muttered, “I knew he looked familiar,” and crossed a picture out. He then pulled a storage scroll from his pocket, and laid it open on the ground. “Oi, Natsumi-san – toss me the head of the guy with the red bandana. Kiri will pay a hefty bounty on him, dead or alive.”

“ _shitohshitfuck—”_ THUNK.

A decapitated head sailed through the air and bounced on the ground a few times, rolling until it came to a halt in the middle of the storage scroll.

Obito cackled. “That’s the fourth bounty I’ve been able to collect in the last twelve hours. I love that woman.” Then he doubled over in a painful hunch when Nishi whacked him with her cane.

The remaining Uchiha, Hayame and Kanzen, looked like they were catching a quick catnap in the shade of a leafless tree. A wise idea, Fugaku thought, as they had also been pulling twenty-four hour shifts with him the last three weeks, and this was a rare moment to catch up on delayed opportunities.

Which meant no one was paying any attention to Mikoto and Fugaku. Because of how thinly-stretched the Police currently were, with the war requiring more and more forces and the Hokage gone to the Capital, Fugaku had also been working back-to-back twenty-four hour shifts. Crime rates had increased among the civilians as the shinobi population became more sparse. Mikoto had been subbing at the Academy for first _and_ second year students. They hadn’t seen each other in _weeks_.

This was the perfect opportunity for one-on-one time with his betrothed. He slowly slid his hand across the rock surface to where Mikoto’s graceful, long fingers rested, and lightly stroked the back of one knuckle.

Mikoto turned to him with her eyes shining in delight and color in her cheeks. “Fugaku-san,” she breathed, leaning close to him.

“I give! I surrender! I – _eeerk—”_

“Yes, Mikoto-san?” It wasn’t the most romantic setting, but death was an important part of life’s natural cycle. People are born, and people will die – some even die peacefully in their sleep, which was a fate tragically denied to these poor misfortunate souls today. Fugaku felt that it was safe to think that there was a sense of poetry with their surroundings, however gory and gruesome it may be.

“She’s awesome!” Mikoto whipped away so fast that her long braid of hair slapped his face. She squealed and bounced her feet against the rock as she watched the carnage. “Have you ever seen such power, such grace in another kunoichi before? I mean, I think of Tsunade-hime and I’ve seen her spar with Hokage-sama, and I heard stories of how Uzumaki Mito was a force to be reckoned with, too – but this? To watch the legendary Hell Hound herself is like a dream come true! Oh, it’s magnificent!”

The tree that Natsumi ripped out of the ground to fling at an escaping shinobi was swung too wide. It sailed over their heads and crashed in the field behind the Uchiha. Hayame jerked awake from the vibrations of the newly-formed crater, sat upright to look around, and then flopped over to resume his nap. “Wake me up when she’s done.”

“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

Fugaku _tried_ to see the magnificence and beauty that Mikoto did. Okay, so the gouka inugami looked quite ethereal as they darted through the brand new forest clearing – Fugaku wouldn’t be an Uchiha if he couldn’t appreciate the element of fire. And Inuzuka Natsumi’s fighting form and styles were certainly, er, unique. When Senju Tsunade smashed something, she would gather the chakra in a specific area of her body and release it upon impact; such techniques required chakra control of the highest degree.

Natsumi just seemed to cloak and enhance her entire body with chakra, and then flared whatever limb she was using for an enhancement, no gathering needed. It was very effective in its simplicity… _if_ you had a tremendous amount of chakra constantly at your disposal to waste. Her movements were also nearly impossible for the Sharingan to follow and predict, because Natsumi operated purely on instinct and didn’t seem to know what she was doing until she was actually doing it. It was like watching a drunken tornado from the entirely unsafe and ill-advised distance of twenty meters.

Not that, uh, he had ever personally witnessed such. That would be foolish, and Uchiha are not foolish! (They are, however, prone to making poor gambling choices when not sober, and just proud enough to honor such choices. Which Fugaku _didn’t_ do. If there were no witnesses, it never happened.)

“Hah – wait, is that it?” Natsumi skidded to a stop and looked around. “I thought there were more.” She shook a finger at the three inugami that circled her feet. “Hey, I told you guys to eat the _dead_ bodies and save the living for me! I’m a bit rusty and I needed the practice.”

Fugaku has a sneaking suspicion that seventy-some years spent in becoming the self-styled Queen of Summons was bound to do something to increase chakra stores to monstrous, tailed beast-like levels. Worse, he never suspected that the crabby, crazy old lady, who wore mismatched clothes and too much gaudy jewelry, who often required police escort home whenever she took a wrong turn and became hopelessly lost in the same village she had lived in for the last forty odd years, possessed such skills or bloodlust. He had thought that the stories of her legendary prowess were just the Inuzuka clan being braggarts who exaggerated everything.

He half-expected everyone to start talking about how Uchiha Madara did indeed drink the blood of his enemies because of how the Inuzuka clan had goaded him.

Natsumi stalked across the clearing, skipping past the craters and trenches, until she dropped her ax right beside Kagami’s knee. The head sunk into the ground, and Kagami didn’t even flinch. She stretched, which didn’t flatter her chest. “Ah, that was a nice warm-up. Just enough to get the blood pumping and to get to know Amatsu all over again.” She stroked the handle of her ax, and then nudged Kagami with her foot. “Oh, and by the way, you’re correct. The bindings _would_ make things more comfortable. I don’t remember the tits flopping around this much.”

Kagami sat upright and spat out the stem of his wild oats. “That’s because you were a lot fuller back then.” He groaned as he stood, his knees cracking and popping with every movement. He paused a moment to study Natsumi’s chest. Fugaku admired his future father-in-law’s audacity. Of course, Uncle Obito had also stared in the same open manner, and Natsumi had merely told Uncle Obito that he needed to come closer because old age probably deteriorated his vision. “Still don’t see why you painted yourself like that. No one can now see your artwork beneath the blood of those poor, helpless enemy shinobi. What did they ever do to you besides wear the wrong headband?”

Natsumi snorted. “They dared to stand between me and my niece. And the world is better off without them anyway; they were pretty lousy shinobi. Practically dropped like flies. Anyone see where I ripped my bindings off?”

Fugaku had very much forgotten all about where Natsumi had ripped off her breast bindings, grateful that his Sharingan hadn’t been on to forever capture that moment in his memory banks.

Fugaku could feel Mikoto vibrating with excitement beside him. “You took out twenty rogues all by yourself!” She bounced like a schoolgirl and clapped her hands. “That was the most amazing thing I _ever_ saw!”

Natsumi folded her hands on top of the handle of her ax and nodded her head regally. “Thank you. Just a few techniques that my clan developed over the generations in order to safely fight against other enemy clans, such as the Hyuuga, the Nara… and the Uchiha,” she added with a sly grin. “The Nara were the most influential in the formation of our acrobatic style, and the worst with their shadow techniques – that’s why our style involves a great deal of leaps and aerial attacks. They had issues with us hunting their deer; we had issues with them keeping us from a viable food source.” She sighed and leaned back, tilting her face to the sun. Her breathing was still even and unhurried. “But we never harbored any ill will between our clans. The Nara understand the ways of the animal kingdom’s food chain better than most clans.”

Mikoto leaned forward with her eyes shining. “And the ax? Amatsu? Is it a legendary weapon?”

“Nah. I just named it after the god of evil because I lost a bet with Hyuuga Nai, which also taught me never to play cards with them – the bastards _all_ cheat with their fancy-pants eyes.”

Mikoto twitched, as if she wanted to run her hands all over the bloody ax. “Was it a gift from the gods?”

Natsumi touched a finger to her chin as she frowned in thought. “Well, I did have to survive dismemberment and evisceration all thanks to some guy who wanted me to join Jashin in the Halls of Valhalla. Not sure if that counts, however. Oh, you brought me my bindings? Good boy! Good, good boy!” Natsumi rubbed the inugami’s head before handing the bindings over to Mikoto for assistance. One of the stray sparks from her rubbing sizzled as it ate a hole through Fugaku’s trouser and blistered his skin. He did his best not to wince. “Great thing about the ax is that you just aim and swing, none of that fancy nonsense like you have with swords. Don’t know what the young people are thinking these days with all this flashy stuff-and-fluff.” Natsumi had the audacity to look outraged with the thought of anyone being loud and showcasing brutal displays of strength and power. “ _That’s_ just not ninja.”

Pot, kettle wants to know why you keep calling it black.

“How old are you?” Mikoto asked suddenly as she secured the bindings in place. Then she hunched her shoulders and blushed. “I don’t mean to be rude, Natsumi-san, but you are _remarkable_ the way you are now. I wish I had seen you when you were younger.”

Oh no.

Ooooooh nooooooooo. Of all the people his darling Mikoto had to develop a girl-crush on, why did it have to be Tsume’s crazy, uncivilized barbarian of a geriatric nudist-aunt?

“Hah!” Natsumi slapped Kagami’s shoulder and nearly sent him stumbling head over heels. “And who says the Uchiha don’t recognize talent and skill when they see it? My darling, you are looking at the sum total of eighty-four… um, — five? - _ish_ years of living and training, and the very best of my ancestors’ breeding!” She posed, and then flexed her arms.

Fugaku wished he could sear out his eyeballs.

Kagami’s face was white as he attempted to correct his newly-dislocated arm. “I’ve never denied that of you,” he wheezed, before stumbling over to Fugaku and telling him to slip the arm back into its socket.

“You remind me a lot of Tsunade-hime,” Mikoto said. “Both of you have similar massive strengths.”

“Yes, well, Tsunade actually revised what I taught her to better suit her own talents. Sarutobi Hiruzen asked me personally to show her the ropes of the Wrath of the Beast style – she’s actually taken it a lot further than I ever could. Which is what a kunoichi _should_ do, Mikoto-chan: establish a superior baseline of skills and knowledge, and then build upon it to customize for your own talents.” Natsumi sighed and ignored Kagami’s grunt of pain as Fugaku reduced the joint. “I swore to myself years ago that I wouldn’t interfere with the way my sister ran things so long as she lived, and there are those who have suffered for it. But that changes now since she’d dead.” The smile that spread across her face made the hair on the back of Fugaku’s arms stand on end. “You see, it has always been my _dream_ to shape Tsume into a worthy heir for my ax.”

Fugaku felt chills race up and down his spine at the thought of Tsume wedding her poor memory, impulsiveness, and utter lack of fear with Natsumi’s bloodthirsty carnage and gouka inugami. And he was beginning to suspect that Tsume’s lack of fear was more a matter of genetics than an actual brain injury. If Uchiha Madara really did do something to Tsume the way that Inuzuka Shinzou claimed, then no doubt Tsume did _something_ to earn his ancestor’s ire.

“I don’t…” Mikoto pressed an uncertain finger to her lip. “I don’t suppose you could possibly spare some time for another kunoichi?”

“Ha ha! I would love to teach you, my darling! Just so long as your father agrees to it.” The air whistled as Natsumi swung her ax one-handed off the ground and pointed it at Kagami. His bangs flared from the air velocity as the ax came to hover just a few scant hairs from the tip of his nose. He merely arched one inquiring eyebrow at her. “After all, I wouldn’t dream of doing anything he _wouldn’t_ approve for his daughter.”

Kagami’s expression was mild as he crossed his eyes to peer at the head of the ax. It was drenched in blood and brain matter. Then he gave Natsumi a placid smile and lightly tilted his head to the side. “It would be a great honor. If my daughter can survive training with you, then she will make a fine wife for the Uchiha clan head.”

_Translation_ : Fugaku, if you _want_ to have a fiancée long enough to get married, keep her in one piece.

_Translation of translation:_ Neener neener, fucker, you’re stuck with the crazy, uncivilized barbarian of a geriatric nudist whether you like it or not, and _I_ get to stay out of this one!

It was sometimes very hard to tell what Kagami _really_ felt because he always seemed the perfect picture of serenity, but Fugaku had a hunch that his future father-in-law really and truly hated Fugaku with the passion of a thousand burning volcanoes.

Natsumi laughed and swung her ax back to rest across her shoulder. “Still as unflappable as always, Kagami.” The crazed bloodlust and cynical cheer melted away. Grief crossed her face for a brief moment. “Tobirama would be so proud of you.”

Kagami held her gaze for a moment, and then nodded his head in acceptance. “Thank you.” He clapped his hands once, winced, and then gingerly rubbed his sore shoulder. “All right, everyone, back on your feet. Break time is over.”

oOoOoOo

“Danzo, you cannot honestly think that I will accept this story about how Tsume had been captured by Iwa shinobi that you later just _happened_ to rescue Tsume from. There’s more here going on than just that.”

Danzo lay on the wooden slats of the wagon he shared with Sakumo. His right leg was elevated and propped up on knapsacks filled with oats, and didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that said oats were probably lumpy and uncomfortable. “That’s all I can tell you until after I speak with the Hokage.” It was the third time Danzo had repeated himself.

Sakumo sat on a small, upside-down bucket used to feed the horses with, holding his head in his hands. “This isn’t about you or the Hokage, though – or at least it shouldn’t be. Tsume is _my_ genin, _my_ responsibility. How can I help her if I don’t know what’s wrong?”

“You already know what’s wrong. Knowing _how_ it went wrong won’t change that.”

Sakumo scrubbed his face. He felt fine, physically. No aches or pains, energy level still high, and chakra stores barely tapped

Mentally, he felt befuddled and lost, like he was trying to dig his way out of a mind-shattering S-rank genjutsu where reality had lost all reason.

Emotionally, his heart felt battered with bitterness, guilt, and despair. He didn’t want to have this conversation with the man he considered his best friend (Sakumo had long admitted that he had lousy taste), but knew something had to be done. He had the daughter of his heart, who was notoriously incapable of fear, _terrified_ of him in the ravine, and his best friend on the verge of self-destruction. The two were intertwined, and he knew he had to untangle them before either could heal.

“Well, since you aren’t going to tell me what you know, I’ll just tell you what I know, and maybe you can fill in the blanks, hmmm?”

Danzo’s frown suggested that he felt like this was an unacceptable compromise.

Sakumo was beyond caring. “Over a year ago, I bought Tsume to Jiraiya and Orochimaru, just as Jiraiya requested, because Jiraiya had a bloody sleeve from which he needed to obtain more information other than who bled all over it. Tsume was the only Inuzuka possible of doing such a thing – others had tried and failed. Jiraiya was impressed, and so was Orochimaru.”

“You told me this when you returned to Wind.”

“What I _didn’t_ tell you is that Orochimaru asked Tsume to fetch Yamanaka Yuu.”

“Ah. I wondered why he was assisting her with memorizing the Fifty Shinobi Rules that she kept complaining about in her letters to you.”

“What _else_ was he supposed to help her memorize?” The silence stretched on. Danzo stared unblinking at the ceiling. Sakumo steepled his fingers and leaned forward. “Danzo, if I were to go right now and sign to Tsume in the incredibly difficult-to-memorize – and virtually impossible for people with short term memory issues – _highly secretive_ hand language of ANBU, would she fluently sign back to me?”

Danzo’s hands twitched.

Sakumo’s temper flared. “I thought so. She wasn’t even out of the damn Academy yet, and you people were already _grooming_ her!”

Danzo winced.

Sakumo scrubbed his face and took a deep breath. “Danzo, this is a young, inexperienced girl with a brain injury that affects her basic day-to-day decision making functions. It skews her sense of danger – which probably only exists in the first place as part and parcel of the Inuzuka animal instincts unique to the clan and its unclaimed sons – so she can’t be trusted to make decisions that keep her _safe_.” He tapped one hand against the other. “And I can see that someone _deliberately_ took advantage of such.”

Danzo flopped one arm across his face, effectively shielding his gaze. Sakumo heard the echoed whispers of agony, of darkness rending a soul. Sakumo deliberately lit another candle just to bring more light into the wagon, and set it closer to Danzo, right beside the only other candle.

“Don’t. You know I prefer the darkness.”

“Bad things happen in the dark, Danzo. Problem is, they have this habit of coming into light. With shinobi, it’s all about timing such an entrance to our advantage. Just as I’m sure that Orochimaru and Shinzou timed it.” Tension tightened Danzo’s shoulders. “The only reason Tsume would _have_ to learn the ANBU sign language is because she was being pulled into a Black Ops – no less than A rank. Because of her age and rank as genin, Shinzou would’ve had to give guardian’s permission. Of the people with authority to run a Black Ops, only you and Orochimaru would pull this kind of stunt with a naïve, inexperienced twelve year old.”

“ _No.”_ Darkness (guilt, shame) coiled about the heart like a python tightening its hold on its chosen kill. ( _Twelve years old…_ )

Sakumo waited for Danzo to say more, but the one-word denial was followed only by the echoes of Danzo’s heart.

“Playing hardball with me? That’s fine, my friend. But even though I know you would stoop to this level, I also know that it was Orochimaru’s operation, because your involvement with Tsume didn’t start until _after_ Orochimaru summoned you from Wind. I reviewed the timeline with Kushina this morning, just to make sure that all my ducks were in a row. Tsume left on a mission with Shinzou the night before she was due to graduate from the Academy. Two weeks after that, Shinzou submitted a KIA for Tsume. Three months later, you get summoned from Wind, and lo and behold, two weeks after _that_ , Tsume comes back to me alive, _accompanied_ by the very man that Orochimaru read into the Black Ops that involved Tsume. Am I missing anything in the time line, so far?”

Danzo was gritting his teeth so hard that Sakumo marveled that he didn’t chip a tooth. Danzo’s heart gave a keening wail. ( _Blood on thighs. Fucking **twelve** years old!_)

“Here’s the first of what I want to know, Danzo.” Sakumo’s killing intent simmered as his voice dropped into a whisper – he made sure to keep the killing intent on a tight leash, lest a passing ninja or samurai interrupt to investigate. “Did Konoha deliberately _abandon_ her twelve year old brain-injured genin with no sense of fear in the middle of enemy territory for three months between Shinzou’s separation, and your involvement?”

Danzo pulled his leg off the pile and rolled upright. He grunted as he forced his wounded leg to cross over the other, and then hunched. “Whatever comes to light here must forever remain in the darkness, Sakumo. Some things are not meant to be brought to light. You are not a creature of darkness; this is _not_ meant for you.”

Sakumo leaned forward and matched his gaze. “Neither is Tsume. But I’ll join her in that darkness without hesitation, because no one should ever have to deal with this alone. I am shinobi. I do not fear the darkness.” When Danzo said nothing, Sakumo folded his hands as if in prayer and bowed his head. “ _Please_. I can’t patch up her heart when I don’t know where the bleeding is coming from.”

Danzo sighed. “Minimal information only. I will not answer any questions you may have concerning events until _after_ I’ve reported to the Hokage.”

Sakumo’s head snapped upright. “I’ll take it. It’ll at least buy me some time to work with Tsume between here and Konoha.” He had hoped that he wouldn’t have to deal with what Tsume had lived through until they had reached the safe haven of Konoha, but Daisuke’s cruel work was forcing Sakumo’s hand early.

“Good. Now hand me your chakra saber, all your kunai, the emergency senbon that you keep in your belt, and then cuff yourself to the support pole. I’ve got chakra-suppressing handcuffs in my knapsack over there.”

Sakumo froze, and then wrapped both hands protectively around the hilt of his saber. “What? Why?”

“No, I’m not answering any of your questions. That’s the price you must pay if you want the low-down on a Black Ops in which I’ve only been peripherally read into.”

Sakumo reluctantly obeyed, his hands shaking with undisguised anxiety as he carefully divested himself of all the weaponry as Danzo demanded. Good thing Danzo didn’t know anything about the projectile marbles he hid in the soles of his jounin sandals.

As Sakumo snapped a cuff shut on one wrist, Danzo said, “Behind your back.”

“Nothing doing, Captain. If something happens and you fall over dead from a sudden heart attack, I want to at least be able to pick the lock and open the cuffs before hell freezes over.”

Danzo considered Sakumo for a moment over the large pile of weaponry that used to be thoroughly hidden on Sakumo’s person. “Fine.”

Sakumo sat on the other side of the pole that supported the overhead cloth canopy, scooted close to wrap his arms around it, and then locked the other cuff in place. He felt an oddness buzz through his body. His arms weighed heavily, and suddenly he felt very tired. He rested his forehead against the pole for a moment, and then glared around it at Danzo. “This better not be a trick. I’ll be seriously _peeved_ if you are playing with me, and you know what that means.”

“Yes, yes. You being seriously peeved is why Chiyo-san has such a high bounty on your head that you’ll never be allowed to set foot in Wind without initiating an international debacle, especially after those polite requests you wrote her requesting ownership of the battle puppets. I still can’t believe that you managed to send three of them off to Tsume and Kakashi without security flagging them.” Danzo straightened upward, rolling his eye to the ceiling as if consulting some distant sky deity. “I knew nothing when Orochimaru summoned me to Grass. He only read me in peripherally upon my arrival; he told me where to meet his mole, how to obtain the Intel, and then to immediately bring the Intel back to him. The mole was to stay. He said that the mole was stationed in an ideal location, and would be able to continue gathering Intel in Iwa for many years to come. He wouldn’t give me the name, Sakumo.”

“He deliberately sent you in _blind_? And _you_ _accepted_ it?”

“I told you, _no_ questions. But yes, he sent me in blind, and yes, I accepted it. Shinobi are to obey the orders given by their superior, and Orochimaru was mine in this situation. He trusted that I didn’t require guidance, and I trusted that I wouldn’t be set up for failure. It took a week to travel from Grass to Earth, and I saw Tsume the first day I arrived. She was feeding stray dogs.”

Sakumo grinned. “That’s my girl. Tsume wouldn’t be Tsume if she didn’t have her dogs. Did she look okay?”

Danzo stared at him with a heavy-lidded eye, and murmured, “She looked like the most desirable object in the world.”

Sakumo couldn’t tell if that was sarcasm or not, especially when the look in Danzo’s eye made the hair on the back of his arms stand on end in warning. “Yeah, but I asked if she looked okay. Like, was she well-fed herself? Was she getting enough sleep? Did she recently experience torture on the rack?”

“I got in, met with her, got the Intel, and left. And I did a lot of thinking after I left, about what Konoha really meant, and what I really believed in.”

“You’re, uh, not the type to do any deep soul-searching, Captain. Was she living on the street there like some kind of urchin, sniffing out clues on the Iwa shinobi as they passed through?” Sakumo heard the barbs tightening around Danzo’s heart, lancing deep. He remembered Tsume’s inadvertent admission. “No, because you got in, and then you got out. Where was she situated?”

“Minimal information only, Sakumo. No questions.”

Sakumo rattled the chain links of his cuffs. “Damn it, Danzo! Give me something I can work with for Tsume’s sake!”

Danzo slowly shook his head. “Tsume knew what she was getting into, and she accepted it. You dishonor and dismiss her talents by continuing to think you can shelter a kunoichi from the world. She refuses to let herself be limited by her brain injury, and yet you would _shackle_ her to it.”

Sakumo snapped his eyes shut. The soul-searing humiliation that was wrapped around Danzo’s heart was growing with every deflection. “You were willing to leave her behind, just like Orochimaru intended. But you changed your mind.” His eyes opened. Danzo was staring at the candle that Sakumo had lit; Danzo was the sort that you had to drag kicking and screaming into the light – Sakumo didn’t like to be blunt, but sometimes a sledgehammer blow was more accurate than the stab of a kunai for someone as stubborn as Danzo. “Did you rape Tsume before or after you got out?”

Danzo’s head jerked as if he’d been struck across the face. His right hand curled into a white-knuckled fist. “Both.” The shrill heart-screams were like nails on a blackboard. ( _Twelve years old – TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD.)_ The moment passed as Sakumo realized that he probably shouldn’t have left his kunai so close to Danzo’s reach. “Well, you have to work with her,” Danzo’s voice was thick, “so I suppose it’s only fair for you to know about the seal that Orochimaru transferred onto Tsume – which Orochimaru didn’t give me any more information on than he did of the mole’s identity – and that Jiraiya and I together _couldn’t_ remove. And we both tried. The best Jiraiya could do was mute it, and not very well, if today was any indication.”

Danzo certainly knew how to parry and thrust. Sakumo forced himself not to remember that moment at the bottom of the ravine, the realization of a nightmare he couldn’t wish on anyone. He dropped his forehead against the pole as his eyes stung and his vision blurred. “The siren seal, designed to attract the attention of men. I’ve heard of them being used on kunoichi who specialize in seduction and infiltration.”

“This is _just_ a siren seal like the Hokage is _just_ another shinobi.”

“Just tell me straight, Danzo. How bad is this thing?”

“Bad. The more you struggle against it, the deeper it sinks its claws.”

“You gave in.”

Danzo turned his face away – away from Sakumo, away from the candles. Turned to the shadows that the candlelight emphasized. “As I told Jiraiya, may the gods have mercy on the tattered remains of my soul, _yes._ You _know_ me though. You know I cannot tolerate the loss of control.”

Ah yes, Sakumo knew Danzo. All too well did Sakumo know the shadowy mists of deceit, the cold frost of ruthlessness, and the unrelenting poison of malice slowly creeping through the maze, crawling closer and closer to Danzo’s heart. Danzo could justify any means to the end when it meant the survival and well-being of Konohagakure.

“Furthermore,” Danzo pinched the candle flames out and plunged the wagon interior into muddled darkness, “the seal was active even before Shinzou sold her to the brothel.”

Sakumo rubbed his wet cheek against his shaking shoulder. “Would the Hokage have known?”

“I had orders to leave the mole there, Sakumo. Orders that could only be given _with_ the Hokage’s approval. I don’t… I don’t know what Hiruzen was thinking – I usually make the dirty decisions for him because he’s notoriously too soft-hearted and merciful. I like to think I wouldn’t make the same choice, but I wonder… would I, if Tsume was nothing more than just another face without meaning? Perhaps. But Hiruzen cherishes _every person_ in the village. How could he do this?” ( _Searing resentment and confusion_.) Sarutobi Hiruzen and Uchiha Kagami were the only persons Sakumo had seen Danzo give any friendly regard. Everyone else, including Sakumo, the remaining Shimura clan, and the other two living teammates from Team Tobirama, were kept at a cold, albeit neutral, distance.

“War forces us to be the worst versions of ourselves.”

“Tsume did obtain the Intel that we desperately needed to end this war – she didn’t ask questions and she didn’t go snooping because all she had to do was smell the men who used her. Tsume was never meant to leave the brothel.”

_Brothel._ Sakumo’s heart shrank even more to realize what life must’ve been like for three months with a siren seal hopped up on soldier pills and steroids. And Danzo, an unbending man who followed the rules to the hilt, broke rank and custom to remove Tsume. (Sakumo _wouldn't_ consider Danzo touching Tsume - wouldn't consider Danzo's face on the man in the ravine, with Tsume trapped beneath him and covered in her own blood. Not here; not now.)

Danzo’s voice sounded distant, as if it came from a long tunnel. “Damn it. This isn’t minimal information. How do you always get me to say more than I intend to?”

In the silence that dragged, Sakumo chuckled. “You broke the rules, Captain. You interfered knowingly and maliciously in a Black Ops that wasn’t your own. You became emotionally involved and probably irrational.” He waited until Danzo growled with irritation, and poured his heart and soul into his next words. “ _Thank you._ ”

“Rules?” A scoffing laugh. “Yes, rules are important for the function of a healthy society. A place for everything, and everything in its place. But _Konohagakure_ has always been more than the rules. I will bend, break, and change any rule that stands between Konoha and her survival. Many forget that the Will of Fire _burns_ , and like any other destructive force, it _consumes_ , and it destroys whatever it consumes. _Something_ has to be sacrificed to the flames. We all have to pay the price, to give the sacrifice. Before this mission, Konoha was like a great tree to me – the leaves reach for the sun, but the roots burrow deep in the earth, the darkness, to support and feed the tree. Without the roots, the leaves wither and die.”

“But after the mission?” Sakumo whispered. He closed his eyes, willing to stay in the dark. Danzo was right – some things aren’t meant to come to light.

“What is Konoha if it willingly sells a twelve year old girl with an overpowered siren seal to a brothel frequented by brutal shinobi?” Sakumo rubbed his cheek against his shoulder again. And then repeated with the other cheek. There was a rustle as Danzo shifted. “That is _not_ a Konoha I could live with – it’s not the Konoha that Senju Tobirama died for – so I took Tsume with me, for I will do anything to protect Konoha… even if Konoha must be protected from herself.”

Sakumo laughed despite his tears. He knew everything was going to be all right now. “No, you’re wrong, Captain. Tsume _is_ Konoha. Konoha is a twelve year old genin – fearless, impulsive, well-meaning, and good-natured, utterly incapable of hatred. Konoha flourishes even despite the severe and harsh trials of life, and she’s always looking out for everyone – the vulnerable, and the stubborn who _think_ they’re invincible. Konoha is people, and we mustn’t forget the people. You have, but now you see that Tsume is Konoha, and Konoha is Tsume. We should _all_ strive to be more like Konoha.”

Danzo sighed in exasperation, and the whispers of agony slowly released their claws from his heart. “Sadly, that just made me realize just how much of Konoha _is_ like an overemotional, self-sacrificing, irrational creature who doesn’t have the best memory, constantly fails to learn from her mistakes, and is always, _always_ going to find another ingenious way of getting into trouble.”

“My dad once told me that it takes a village to raise a child. I think it’s also fair to say that sometimes it takes a child to raise a village.” Sakumo silently slipped the cuffs off as Danzo grumbled.

“That makes no sense.”

“It does to me. All of it. Thank you, Danzo.” Sakumo relit the candles, bringing them both back into the light. He blinked. “How did you get to the other end of the wagon behind the grain sacks with your hamstring severed?” He studied the undisturbed pile of weapons. “And where’s my chakra saber?”

Danzo looked shifty-eyed. “It’s collateral. Why did you uncuff yourself?”

“Because you’ve given me all the information I needed to know about what happened with Tsume. I know what I’m working with. One last thing, though.” Sakumo began replacing his weaponry in his pockets and belt. They weren’t his saber and they wouldn’t be able to channel his lightning chakra without melting in his hands, but they were still sharp and pointy. “The seal. You and Jiraiya couldn’t remove it, but I haven’t sensed anything on Tsume. Is it something she can flip on or off?”

Danzo’s eye narrowed. “ _That_ is a very good question for which I would also love an answer. The seal has a suicide stop that prevents it from ever being removed or switched off completely. I had been under the apparently misguided assumption from Jiraiya that he had _permanently_ _muted_ the seal as a way around the stop. One theory I have is that Tsume _thought_ the seal unmuted somehow because she knows that it drives men into a frenzied lust, which would otherwise justify in her simple mind why Daisuke decided to rape her.”

“That would explain why she seemed terrified that I was there. Probably thought I’d be snared by the seal, too.” Sakumo placed the handcuffs back into Danzo’s knapsack, where everything was frightfully organized _and_ labeled. Apparently, the rules for everything being in its proper place extended even to Danzo’s shaving kit.

“I don’t buy it, though. She stuffed enough blast tags in her cast that we wouldn’t be able to scrape off enough of her remains from the ravine walls for a funeral. Which highlights the other possibility – Tsume somehow knew that she could unmute the seal, and used it to her advantage. Daisuke was stronger, older, more skilled, and much more ruthless than Tsume. She was wounded and cornered, but she _knew_ him. He was one of the shinobi who brutalized her at the brothel – since he fell prey to the seal once, she knew there was a high likelihood it would happen again.”

Sakumo’s mind whirled with the implications. “And Tsume was buying time so she could set the tags off before he realized, so he wouldn’t have a chance to escape the blast range. I don’t know whether I should be proud of her forethought – because we both know she’s not the best when it comes to tactics – or go cry in a corner somewhere.”

Danzo pointed. “You seemed comfortable enough with the pole there.”

“Shut up.” Sakumo scrubbed his cheeks and sulked. “You know I’m sensitive.”

“And I did my best to beat it out of you in ANBU – fat lot of good that did. May the Sage of the Six Paths save me from bumbling empaths.”

“So that was why she wanted you instead of me. She knew how to turn on the seal, but not how to turn it off, and she…” Sakumo didn’t hide the wonder in his voice, nor the smile that spread across his face (he ignored the horror twisting his gut, because he was going to have to really work hard on getting Tsume to understand and recognize what healthy boundaries looked like), “she _trusts_ you, Danzo.”

Danzo sullenly sunk behind the grain bags until only the tufts of his hair could be seen. “Just for _that_? I’m not giving back your saber unless we’re invaded by enemy nin. You said it yourself, Sakumo – she’s incapable of making decisions that keep her safe. That’s how this whole damn thing started in the first place.”

“She must’ve turned the seal off,” Sakumo said, “because I didn’t feel like I was driven into a frenzy. Well, no more than what any man _would_ be driven to if he witnessed his daughter being raped. Which I stopped with my saber. Which I should keep, you know, just in case her seal goes off again.”

“Take a hike - it's mine until I say it's yours." There was a pause, and then the tone in Danzo's voice shifted. "The seal may not be an issue if she knows you’re around, now that Tsume realizes that she’s not willing to pay the price of ensnaring you.” Danzo peeked over the slope of the bags. “I actually feel sorry for you.”

That wasn’t the sort of subject change that Sakumo expected. “What?”

“Because now you have a well-meaning, impulsive, fearless twelve year old who can’t be trusted to make safe decisions, _wielding_ an overpowered siren seal that she can flip on and off _like a light switch_. Oh, and then there’s the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki. You only had her for four months before she was abducted. Can you imagine what life is going to be like in another four months?”

Oh. _Oh_ dear. Sakumo carefully sat on the floor and took a deep breath to steady his nerves. Danzo did that on _purpose._

“Oh, and did I ever mention that Tsume, at her established maximum allowed olfaction, knew exactly what our Hokage was eating and drinking in his office with three Uchiha from over _eight hundred_ _kilometers_ away?”

“Eight hundred—!” Sakumo glared and cleared his throat so his voice wouldn’t crack again. “Why, no, you didn’t. That appears to have uncharacteristically slipped your mind.”

“Ah, my apologies. I suppose I’ve simply been too busy to mention that the strength of her nose is beyond S Rank classified, as Jiraiya put it. Well, since I’m feeling _unusually_ generous and am in the mood for sharing, I highly encourage you to ask Tsume about Uchiha Madara, and what _he_ was doing with her in the Nara forest, six years ago.”

Sakumo flopped backwards until he was sprawled uncomfortably on their supplies. He folded his hands over his stomach. “I think I’m a bit too shocked at the moment imagining the strength of Tsume’s olfaction to appreciate knowing that a presumed-dead S-rank missing nin somehow managed to get into the Nara forest without the Nara clan _knowing_ , and frolicked with an innocent six year old Inuzuka.” He already knew about Madara; Shinzou’s screaming reports of who had harmed the young girl had sent security on high alert for an entire year afterwards, and he had been assigned to a task force with Hiderama. It was how they met, spent time together, and grew in love.

“Is frolic the new word for ‘fucked over’ or ‘fucked with’ these days?” 

Sakumo rubbed his forehead. “Did _you_ know about Madara being in the Nara forest, six years ago?”

“…let’s just say that Konoha’s security was probably frolicking that day. I blame the Hokage and the Head of Internal Affairs. Shinzou said it was Madara, but she was also hysterical at the time, so…” He shrugged. 

Sakumo listened to Danzo’s retreating heart – it was trying to shore up its bulwark again, rebuilding sturdy walls that kept the world out, because Danzo’s brittle heart only knew how to be oversensitive. Hearing ceases to work when exposed too long to constantly deafening noise, and somehow Danzo wound up with a sensitive heart that was hyperaware and exaggerated with its feelings. It was hard to reconcile something so fragile with a man like Danzo – but Danzo was too brittle to be strong, and at such a high risk for his ideals to easily warp into something darker, something more deadly.

“We’re done for now, but this isn’t over,” Sakumo said as he stepped out of the wagon. "It’ll have to wait until we get back to Konoha."

“I know that.” Danzo’s voice was a whisper from the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of talking in this very lengthy chapter, because there are repercussions to our behaviors and choices.


	21. Alpha Years - Chapter Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aunt Natsumi continues to be her awesome self. The Uchiha continue to be lovable dorks. Danzo jumps to the wrong conclusion (surprise surprise). It becomes very obvious that Tsume has a hair fetish. This is the second-to-last chapter of the Alpha Years. I'll post the last chapter soon, and then there will be no updates next week, as I have to have surgery. (Ah, intermittent ovarian torsion. Is there room to complain about medical misogyny? Let me express my fury of waiting four and a half hours in my local ER with severe, unresponsive abdominal pain - which could've been appendicitis, or ovarian torsion, or an ectopic pregnancy, and the lady who thought she needed stitches after her corgi bit her was seen before me. She arrived after I was already there for 2.5 hours. She was seen after forty minutes of waiting. IF YOU HAVE A HEALTH PROBLEM THAT CAN BE HANDLED BY URGENT CARE, THERE IS NO WAY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH THAT IT RANKS HIGHER IN TRIAGE THAN SEVERE ABDOMINAL PAIN IN THE ER. I sure as hell don't need no male doctor telling me that this is ovulation pain. Look, buster, I've been ovulating longer than you've been a doctor. I've had five pregnancies, three live births, and two miscarriages, and I've never had such excruciating abdominal pain. I think I know what's a normal level of ovulation discomfort. How about I channel my inner Tsume and rupture a testicle, and ask you why you're fussing, it's totally normal to feel like that... I hope I still have an ovary come next week)

The Uchiha Clan was considered by many (most of them also Uchiha) to be a clan amongst clans. Strong, disciplined, honorable, and talented even without use of their powerful doujutsu, they held themselves to a standard that many other clans sought to achieve. 

“This,” said Uncle Obito as he held a tea tray and walked shoulder to shoulder beside his wife, “is the best vacation _ever_. I haven’t had to do a thing except collect heads for bounty.”

Across the span of his life, Kagami had worked with the best of his clan. Uncle Obito was Izuna’s eldest of two children – the only one still alive – and he had fond memories of “Uncle Madara, you know, _before_ he went completely batshit crazy.” Uncle Obito had also been a lethal Uchiha ANBU captain back in his heyday, before Tobirama established the Uchiha Police Force and decided to funnel most of the Uchiha into it. Uncle Obito had declined leadership of the Uchiha Clan, feeling unworthy, and requested that it instead go to a different cousin.

Kagami had also worked with the worst of his clan, and everything in between.

“Which color do you want, red or blue?” Fugaku asked Mikoto, offering her blue teacup.

“Red,” she breathed, not looking at him. She kept twisting her head and looking over her shoulder, unwilling to lose a single moment of Natsumi’s glory. Fugaku guided her through the rolling plains with a hand gently wrapped around her wrist. He really was a good man, truly considerate of darling Mikoto’s needs.

Kagami accepted the blue teacup from Nashi with a quiet murmur of thanks. He was under no illusion that the Uchiha clan was _perfect_. It had its own fair share of flaws, quirks, weaknesses, and oddities. He had also worked with many other clans, and ninjas with civilian backgrounds, and found that life _required_ a wide and varied assortment of differences. If life was a garden and everyone was a rose, it would be a very boring, monotonous garden.

“There’s blood. In my tea. _Again._ ”

_His_ tea was delicious, blood notwithstanding – at least it added extra flavor. And having tea on the run also meant that the reinforcements traveled at a pace that didn’t eventually leave Kagami gasping desperately for air. He was no longer suited for long-distance stamina after surviving rheumatic fever.

“She… she aims it just for me, doesn’t she? I can’t…I feel faint. I think I’m going to pass out. Or throw up.”

In the great garden of life, Kagami decided that he liked the idea of being a carrot. Yes, a carrot suited him just fine. Cheerful, crisp, reliable, and sweet. It was a good metaphor, and the Second – who did so love his metaphors, no matter that he rarely used them – would’ve been proud of Kagami.

Uncle Obito rolled his eyes and switched teacups with Yakumi, careful not to jostle the liquid. “Take a deep breath and think happy thoughts, boy.”

Yakumi obeyed, squeezing his eyes shut and muttering, “Butterflies. Butterscotch cookies. A brand new toilet brush with an ergonomic handle for the basement cells’ restroom.”

“Bah, young kids these days,” Uncle Obito muttered, sipping the tainted tea. “Modern village living has made them all soft. Back in _my_ day, we graciously accepted teacups brimming with the blood of our enemies.”

Aunt Nashi lightly touched his wrist. “Darling, we all know that Uncle Madara was unbelievably unstable, but he only did that _once_ , and _only_ because Inuzuka Shinzou challenged him in front of Tobirama and Hashirama.”

Daimaru whined. “Are we there yet?”

“No,” Fugaku replied with a frown. “But we _are_ five minutes closer to our destination than we were the last time you asked. Five minutes ago. Which is the distance of a kilometer.”

“Yeah, but I thought we’d finally see some action instead of _this._ It’s boring. I want to be _in_ the fight – not watch it. This is even worse than when you investigated who was extorting the Civilian Chairman for having sex with his wife’s cat, and all you let me do was alphabetize your files!”

“You complained two days running about the paper cut you got,” Ringo said. “We’d never hear the end of it if you got stabbed. Besides, Natsumi-san appears to have it all taken care of.”

“Are you drinking tea?” Natsumi looked outraged beneath the splatters of gore as she joined their sedate pace.

Mikoto’s smile was shy as she held her teacup out as an offering. “They’re brimming with the blood of your enemies. The blood flies far with your marvelous ax.”

“Look, that was between my sister and Madara, and they were both showing off in front of the Senju, anyway. I had _nothing_ to do with any cups brimming with the blood of any enemies.”

“It’s disgusting, is what it is!” Yakumi insisted, forgetting all about describing to Uncle Obito how he color-coordinated his spice rack. “Completely unhygienic! It was red, and floating _right there_ in my tea. I…I think I’m going to be sick.” He turned away from his clanmates as his face went pale once more.

“Oh.” Natsumi eyed her Uchiha companions, as if calculating how far out of reach she should be. Especially when Ringo and Daimaru began to loudly discuss Sanzo-kun’s illicit affair with Miss Fluffster The Third, and how the physics of such could even be possible. Natsumi settled for walking at point with Kagami as the group was circled restlessly by the three gouka inugami that she kept constantly at her beck and call. She bumped Kagami’s recently-dislocated arm, which was tucked away in a makeshift sling. “ _This_ was the best you could come up with?” she hissed, too softly to be heard by the others. She absently adjusted her breast bindings, opting to wear them during the fight. Her upside-down otters could no longer be seen, but at least the blood splatters matched in color. “Obito isn’t bad – at least he knows which side of the sword he’s supposed to stick into his enemy. Two of the others are _sleepwalking._ And snoring!"

Let it never be falsely said that Uchiha can't multitask, Kagami thought imperiously as he took a sip of tea. After all, those two had been awake for forty-eight hours when he pulled them for this mission, and he had promised to let them sleep as long as they could still keep up. Then Kagami gave Natsumi a shifty look. “The Second used to say that every family tree has a few nuts.”

“Soooo, what? You shook the tree until all the nuts fell out at once?”

“They’re not _that_ bad, Natsumi-san. While the selection was admittedly limited, I chose people who are skilled fighters with a variety of talents – not for their shining personalities or social graces. Otherwise, I would have protested more about you joining us.” 

Because, in the great garden of life, there would always be nuts. And that was okay. If it weren’t for the nuts in his life, Kagami didn’t think he’d know what normal people looked like, much less appreciate them – especially after his youth with Team Tobirama.

oOoOoOo

On the evening of their first day of camping, a group of twenty-two enemy Kumo nin decided that the hillside opposite of their hollow was the perfect place to set up a small camp.

“That’s just perfect,” Danzo grumbled as he glared over the stone wall at the enemy camp.

“Can’t blame them, really,” Sakumo said, leaning both elbows on the stone wall and also watching the group from a distance. “The Kurama genjutsu is so good at making this area so unassuming and unthreatening, they figured it was a good place to also set up shop.” Then he nudged Danzo without looking at him. “And we might want to spread the word that I will personally drag back _anyone_ who tries to sneak off to assassinate the Kumo nin. Mifune-dono said as long as they don’t come in our direction, if they’re not bothering us, we won’t bother them. We’ll wait until our reinforcements arrive, since we’re pretty safe as long as they don’t have a tracker or a sensor.”

Danzo glared silently, and Sakumo subtlety shifted a little further out of the reach of Danzo’s crutches.

oOoOoOo

They were in the midmorning of their second day of camping, when Tsume finally managed to mostly self-heal her left arm. Unfortunately, she hadn’t realized that causing the skin to heal while she still had stitches in place meant that Kyou had to spend nearly an hour carefully cutting out the stitches – although he could’ve gotten them out sooner if he didn’t also read Tsume the riot act at the same time. Kyou made his displeasure with her thoughtlessness very clear to everyone in hearing as he loudly berated Tsume. Then he spent the next hour reviewing Tsume’s chakra control. She proudly demonstrated her skills by healing her skin once more. Sakumo was quiet but thoughtful as he and Tsume’s teammates sat and watched from a wagon’s shadow with the four ninken clustered near by.

It had been an overcast morning that smelled like it was going to be clear day, but the temperature hadn’t improved much since awakening to a dusting of fresh snow covering everything. Tsume, still wearing Sakumo’s shirt and not much else for warmth on account of how Kushina and Kokoro didn’t have any spare cloaks to share, had snuck into Danzo and Sakumo’s wagon. Kushina and Ichi kept a lookout while Tsume poked through Sakumo and Danzo’s things. She discovered a large, long-sleeved wool shirt in Danzo’s bag, right next to his labeled shaving kit and a pair of chakra-suppressing cuffs that smelled like Sakumo (she was so _not_ going to think about the implications of such), and was pleased to see that the shirt would fit perfectly over her cast without the need to rip out any seams.

Kyou rubbed his chin as he considered Tsume. “You’re remarkably good at this. I expect such control from the Inuzuka women, but rarely are they skilled at your age.”

Tsume glanced quickly at Sakumo. She carefully made sure that she was never alone with Sakumo, always having Kushina or Kokoro has a cushion between them. So far, Sakumo seemed equally reluctant to be alone with her. “I spent a couple of months in the company of Iwa shinobi, like Daisuke. I got a lot of practice in.”

Sakumo flinched.

Kyou cleared his throat before lightly tracing her cast. “How about this arm?”

“Every time I try healing my right hand, I get really bad muscle cramps. They feel wrong, so I decided not to try.”

“Sound choice. Bones have to be straightened correctly before you can heal with chakra, otherwise they heal incorrectly, and that would cause problems later. The only way to correct such problems is by systematically breaking every incorrectly healed bone. Besides, it’s best to let bones heal naturally in younger people, otherwise you run the risk of affecting the growth plates.” At her look of confusion, he added, “That’s the portions of your bones that become longer as you grow. You’ll wind up with a stunted arm.”

Tsume rubbed her nose and thought about how Narumi had chewed her out for breaking every bone in her hand. “That would be a lot of bones to break.” She didn’t want to go through that process again.

“Have you ever tried healing anyone else?”

“No. Should I?” Tsume wilted slightly under the glare that Kyou gave her. “I guess that’s a no.”

“There’s a reason why we don’t let anyone run amok, healing willy-nilly when they don’t have the formal training and knowledge. You know a little of _what_ to do, but do you know why or how? Do you have the knowledge of anatomy and physiology to prioritize and triage? You Inuzuka have a tendency to run headlong into battles, which med nin are _not_ to do. Med nin aren’t to stand in the front of the battle line, they’re to die _last_ of their team, and they cannot stop the healing until the lives of their teammates come to an end. Not in that particular order. And if I know anything about the Inuzuka, it’s that they’re sure to be in the first line of casualties.”

Sakumo coughed into his fist. His cough sounded like, “Tsunade.”

Kyou’s expression instantly soured. “ _Unless_ the med nin happens to be a Senju with an incredibly rare razor-edge chakra control that’s seen once every two or three generations. Oh yeah, and that she’s mastered the Strength of a Hundred technique and the Creation Rebirth. The first you could probably learn from your aunt, who gave Tsunade-hime the idea and the groundwork in the first place. Who knows about the second, however.”

Sakumo didn’t bother hide his grin. “While I think it’s great that Tsume-chan has good chakra control and knows how to heal herself, I don’t believe that she’s quite up to learning anatomy and physiology just yet.”

“Is there math involved?” Tsume asked nervously. “Oh, gosh! If there’s numbers involved, I won’t do it!”

“Worse,” Kokoro replied, scratching San behind the ears. “Memorization.”

“Noooooo.” Tsume’s melodramatic whine was saved from being addressed when Danzo entered their midst. He was astride Juubi, having decided that it was better to move across camp on horseback than on crutches. Juubi stretched his powerful neck and immediately began nosing Tsume, looking for some of the stray carrots that Tsume continued to feed him when Danzo wasn’t looking. Juubi was being nicer to Danzo, as if he had decided that Danzo was worthy of riding him after they shed blood together in their battle against the Iwa nin. Danzo still didn’t like Juubi, but apparently liked him a little more than the crutches. Or maybe just sitting so high made Danzo feel superior, that’s what Kokoro had said.

“Tsubasa-san reported sensing our reinforcements four kilometers away,” Danzo told Sakumo, jerking Juubi’s head away from Tsume’s reach. He unhooked the saber from his belt and tossed it to Sakumo, who caught it with a wide-eyed look of grateful wonder. Sakumo began caressing the blade and checking for any possible flaws. “How far away do you think they smell?” he asked Tsume. His eyebrows dipped low in a puzzled frown as he studied her.

“Um.” Mentally swearing at her greatest nemesis, _Math-sama,_ Tsume did her best to measure the distance of the Uchiha and Aunt Natsumi’s scents with their current location. “Just over the hill? Maybe two hills over?” She was fairly sure that was reasonably close. “Aunt Natsumi and the Uchiha are moving steady, but at the angle they’re approaching…” Stupid Math-sama. “I think they’re going to cross the hill and run right through the Kumo camp. They’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

“Oh! Oh!” Kushina bounced up and down. “Can we watch the meet-up?”

“Sure,” Sakumo declared, just as Danzo said, “ _Hell_ no!”

Then Danzo glared at Sakumo. “What do you mean, sure? And why,” he glared down at Tsume, “are you wearing _that?_ ”

“I never said they could be on the battlefield. They can watch from the wall and see everything from there. Give me some credit here, Captain – it’s rare to watch a strong, skilled kunoichi on the battlefield, when their traditional roles usually involve healing, espionage, or Intel. Hardly a lick of battle to be seen. To watch the Hell Hound herself in her favored environment is a privilege few survive to tell about, especially when she retired before the girls were even born.”

Tsume sulked. “I was really, really cold this morning. Do I have to give it back? I’ll arm-wrestle you for it.”

Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose. “Arm-wrestle me, she says. With no viable arms. Keep the damn shirt, I didn’t need it anyway. Sakumo, what are you _teaching_ these girls besides those ridiculous rules of yours? If I know Inuzuka Natsumi in full-fledged battle form – and I _do_ , I’ve had to paint the damn otters on right-side up too many times _–_ you will regret letting them _watch_.” Wait – Danzo got to personally help Aunt Natsumi with her battle paints? “The Slug Princess would be a far more valuable role model for them.”

Sakumo shrugged as he stroked the pommel of his saber. “Tsunade-hime is in a different country right now, anyway. And I’m sure that Natsumi doesn’t have anything that the girls don’t have themselves.”

“Except the piercings,” Tsume said absently as she wracked her treacherous brain to remember if Grandmother or anyone else had ever told her of any incident where a male had been allowed to assist an Inuzuka with her battle paints. She studied Danzo with newfound admiration. Face paints signified a woman’s caste in the clan, and the battle paints was her favored guardian. The symbolism was intensely private now that most Inuzuka women dressed in clothes, with only a hint of their heritage usually limited to their facial markings, but it had always been a considerably great honor for younger, inexperienced clanswomen to assist a higher-ranked warrior in prepping for battle.

As Danzo shifted his glare from Tsume to Sakumo, Sakumo angled his body to hide his chakra saber from Danzo’s gaze, and held up a defensive, slightly placating, hand. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, Captain. Tsume already knows about her aunt’s piercings. _All_ the piercings.”

“Kakashi probably knows too. Aunt Natsumi joined us enough in the onsen.”

Sakumo wilted in dismay at that, whimpering.

Danzo yanked Juubi’s head away from the carrot that Tsume offered. She pouted. “Stop feeding the disobedient cow.”

Tsume turned her nose up in the air. “Juubi should have as many carrots as he wants.” Juubi snickered softly in agreement.

“Stop calling him that infernal name!” Juubi swatted Danzo with his studded tail; Danzo shielded his head and back with long-suffering practice, his forearm crisscrossed with multiple old and new lacerations.

“You know, Captain, you’re going to lose this argument and therefore some of your authority if you try to win this one with Tsume. Apparently, she regards Juubi just like a dog, and you know where you stand with her dogs.”

“Floundering buffoons are not allowed to call my horse anything either.”

Tsume shifted closer so Juubi could eat the proffered carrot.

Danzo leveled his glare onto Kokoro and Kushina. Both girls cringed backwards. Even Kyou, who wasn’t on the receiving end, began looking for an escape route as the scent of his fear spiked. “Besides,” Danzo drawled, his eye half-closed, “I’m pretty sure that everyone else has the wherewithal and the sensibility to realize how dangerous it is to _piss me off_.”

Danzo didn’t smell angry, so Tsume ignored while she offered Juubi a handful of grain that she had snuck from the bags stored in the girls’ wagon. Sakumo shrugged nonchalantly, used to the worst that Danzo had already thrown at him in ANBU. Danzo sighed. “Fine. Let them watch the Hell Hound tear through her enemies like the wrath of Amatsu-sama rising from the pits of hell.”

“This,” said Tsume with a triumphant fistpump, “will be the coolest thing _ever._ ” Her other hand was wet with Juubi’s slobber. She swiped it clean on Danzo’s pant leg.

oOoOoOo

Personally, Tsume thought it was a stroke of genius for Kokoro to figure out how to pop the horse’s corn into popcorn so they could have something to munch on as they awaited Aunt Natsumi’s arrival. The popcorn needed butter and salt, but such commodities were considered a luxury when it came to war rations. The clouds had cleared away to reveal a surprisingly bright sun, made even brighter from the reflection of the lingering snow. Kokoro was wearing a pair of sunglasses to protect her gaze from the glare as she sat carefully balanced (with a chakra-enhanced seat, just like Tsume had explained) on the top of the stone wall. Kushina and Tsume sat on either side of Kokoro, since Kokoro wasn’t willing to relinquish her hold on the bucket of popcorn. Grandmother’s four ninken were on the other side of the stone wall, all resting just below Tsume’s dangling feet and pressed against the wall to avoid the edge of the Kurama genjutsu.

“They should be coming along at any moment,” Tsume said, waving at the two distant hilltops. On the left hilltop, the Kumo nin were scattered around the premises of their own camp site, digging pits and renewing traps. The Kurama genjutsu was subtle and innocent enough with the sheer sense of boredom, that it failed to illicit any suspicion or curiosity. Kumo nin hadn’t ventured close enough to the Konoha camp to require necessary action on Mifune’s part. However, given the trajectory of the incoming Konoha reinforcements, it looked like a collision was going to take place very shortly. 

“Are they here yet?” Mifune asked, sounding slightly out-of-breath but looking unruffled as he gracefully alighted upon the stone wall beside Tsume. He surveyed the countryside for a moment, and then slid down to sit beside Tsume. He clasped his hands in his lap. “If I get to see the Hell Hound in battle, I feel that I may die a happy man.”

“Why’s that?” Tsume asked around her mouthful of popcorn.

Mifune side-eyed her for a moment, and then turned his gaze back to the enemy. “Let’s just say that some dreams are always possible, no matter how old you get.”

Huh. Well, Tsume could respect that. Especially when she had tried on Aunt Natsumi’s traditional garb and modeled it for Kakashi and Kuromaru. They all agreed that the loincloth was probably too large for her. Tsume was still trying to work out what she wanted for her battle paints. Crimson red for alpha, of course, but she hadn’t figured out what sort of guardian she’d wind up with. She hoped that it would be something fierce and terrifying. Definitely nothing like what Cousin Hiji had. There was no way Tsume would ever admit that she was painted with _guppies_ and _llamas_.

Sakumo squeezed himself between her and Kokoro, leaning half-over the side. “I wanna see this too,” he said, dangling from the stone wall with his head nearly tucked beneath Tsume’s cast.

“Where’s Danzo?”

Sakumo indicated the direction with a brief nod of his head. “Over there.”

Tsume craned her head backwards. “Um.” She straightened her head. “He looks as angry as he smells.” She cringed at Danzo’s scent as he approached the wall, able to easily see over it from horseback. “He really doesn’t want us watching Aunt Natsumi, does he?” She wondered if giving Danzo back his wool shirt would improve his mood. Of course, she’d also get cold again, and he had said that he didn’t need it.

Sakumo reached up to ruffle her hair. He winced and withdrew his bleeding hand. “Spikes?” he asked, his voice equal parts of outrage and amusement. He stuck one bleeding finger in his mouth and sucked. “You put _spikes_ in your _hair_?”

“Juubi liked the dandelions that I braided in his tail yesterday and said I could keep the spikes. I figured that would be okay since Danzo wasn’t going to be riding out into any battle while his hamstring is giving him fits.” Well, Juubi hadn't _said_ anything, but he smelled of approval, and that was good enough for Tsume, so Tsume had left the caltrops in the tail.

Mifune-sama coughed. “You… you braided flowers into the tail of the fiercest war horse I have ever seen?”

Well, technically, dandelions were an herb, and she couldn’t find anything else that was green and growing in the plains of early winter. She liked dandelions because they were incredibly hardy, and they were also fluffy and cheerful. She wanted to be like a dandelion.

Tsume bounced her heels off the stone wall and stared across the distance, trying to see just the countryside in front of her. There was still a residual ache in her head and scalp from two days ago, and her stomach swam with overwhelming embarrassment if she allowed herself to think about what Sakumo had seen. “Juubi just wanted to be pretty, and I wanted hair that someone couldn’t grab. Besides, Danzo helped, because I couldn’t get the spikes out of Juubi’s tail very easily with just one hand.” Danzo had also been half-groggy from his nap when he caught her. Tsume suspected that he was just delighted to make Juubi’s tail a little less painful to get whacked with.

“Ah. It was good of Shimura-san to assist you. Your decision seems very reasonable to me after what happened.” Mifune’s voice was full of understanding, but not pity. Tsume decided she liked him. “So, how much longer do you think we have to wait?”

“Any minute now,” Tsume said, rocking. “They smell really, really close.”

“Ah. I don’t sense their presence. They’re probably masking their approach.”

Danzo snorted. “Natsumi is too bold of a woman to mask her approach. She’s the brawler of the Hell Hounds. Shinzou was the one with all the subtlety; she would silently and patiently track her prey, able to completely mask her presence from almost all forms of detection. Natsumi was the brute force of the duo, so when the prey was discovered, Natsumi would incapacitate them.”

Mifune sighed wistfully. “Legends in their own times,” he murmured, sharp eyes not moving from the horizon.

“Oh! Oh!” Tsume bounced up and down in her seat. “Here they come!”

One far-off figure, a blotch of tan and red, appeared against the skyline as it crested the top of the rolling hill. It paused a moment as it was joined by four ominous black blots. Everything stood still for a single moment – no breeze, no call of birds, insects silent. And then the blotch darted forward to the other hillside where the Kumo camp was, parting through the snow-covered dead grass like a scythe, and the black blots followed smoothly behind. Half-way down the hill, a shrill, wordless battle cry echoed across the countryside. This startled the Kumo nin, causing a flurry of movement and shouts to ring through their camp.

Aunt Natsumi collided with the camp without slowing her headlong rush. Enemies went flying and tents collapsed under the brute force of her attack. The blots – gouka inugami – lunged at the Kumo nin as Aunt Natsumi plowed through with her ax swinging freely.

“Oh look, Sakumo,” said Danzo, his voice disturbingly light, “Inuzuka-san is _frolicking_ with the enemies.”

Sakumo choked on his laughter. “There’s certainly no question of Aunt Natsumi is enjoying herself.”

As Aunt Natsumi crushed the opposition, seven other figures crested the hill and meandered towards the Konoha camp.

“Uchiha,” Tsume supplied as she crammed a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

“Wow,” said Kushina, unblinking as she watched Aunt Natsumi’s carnage. “They can’t even touch her. She slides around like oil on water!”

“That’s not sliding. That’s _jumping,”_ Kokoro said. She peeked over the edges of her sunglasses. “Is it just me, or is Aunt Natsumi not wearing a vest?”

Tsume hastily ate more popcorn as she felt Danzo’s gaze burn into the back of her head. She didn’t know why he was glaring on her; _she_ wasn’t wearing the traditional battle garb!

Mifune winced as one of the inugami set a Kumo nin on fire. “I think we can get the horses hitched and move out in an hour. It won’t take long for Inuzuka-san to clear our path of obstacles.”

“Hey.” Kokoro reached around Kushina to poke Tsume in the knee. “So, are the Uchiha just here to act as an honor guard? They aren’t doing anything to help your aunt.”

“They’d just get in the way,” Tsume said, her cheeks bulging. The Uchiha were now visible enough that Tsume could visually identify what her nose had told her. Fugaku and his brothers were there (Tsume vaguely recalled the twins from her first year in the Academy, but they just weren’t as fun as Fugaku…), and so was the clan cousin whom Tsume had smelled with the Hokage when Danzo first tested the strength of her olfaction, wearing a long red coat with a wide raised cowl and his arm in a sling. She turned to Danzo and pointed. “That’s him,” she said. “Remember when I told you about Fugaku and his father back in Earth with the Hokage? _He’s_ the third Uchiha.”

Danzo rubbed his temples. “That would be Uchiha Kagami. Head of Internal Affairs. Given your general antagonism with the Uchiha, _try_ not to cross paths with him, Tsume. He and the Jounin Commander are the highest ranking shinobi in Konoha after the Hokage.”

“He’s also one of the Captain’s old teammates,” Sakumo said cheerfully. “ _And_ his brother-in-law.”

Well, Tsume’s nose already knew that this here Kagami was sexually intimate with someone who was closely related to Shimura Danzo. Tsume tilted a look between Kagami and Danzo. The teenaged Uchiha girl’s scent was a conglomeration of Uchiha and Shimura, with an active Sharingan, so it was obvious that the sexual intimacy had been fruitful.

The Uchiha stopped just outside the edge of the Kurama genjutsu, their Sharingan active and their expressions bored. In the background, Aunt Natsumi’s laughter was harsh. Everyone but the teenaged Uchiha girl was staring at the camp; the girl kept her gaze turned towards Aunt Natsumi and had to be guided by Fugaku. Kagami’s scent was mild like fresh milk and honey, and his face placid and friendly – and there was a taint of illness in his scent.

Kagami moved forward until his toes brushed against the genjutsu. “We’re coming in.” 

It was a simple matter for the Uchiha to hop the stone wall, even with all the watchers lining it. Kagami weaved his way through the samurai and ninja, walking the top of the wall, until he stood between Danzo and Mifune. He inclined his head first to Mifune. “I am Uchiha Kagami. It is my understanding that you are in charge here, Mifune-dono.”

“Yes. Thank you for answering the summons. Moving across the countryside with minimal forces has proven to be riskier than initially anticipated. My samurai can guard the wagon train, but it’s in everyone’s best interests if the fighting is kept away from the train, and you shinobi are the only ones with that kind of mobility.” It was left unsaid that Mifune didn’t like to engage the enemy without reason, as he still wanted to maintain his neutrality in the war. He took up arms to protect the wounded; he would not battle to defeat an enemy if they didn’t first attack him. That was how he had explained it to Tsume and Kushina when Danzo introduced them.

“It would be my honor to accompany this train, helping you to protect the most vulnerable. I hope we don’t disturb your routine too much.” Kagami turned to Danzo and grinned in amusement. “You’re looking more battered than I’m used to seeing. You must’ve tangled with some really tough opponents.”

“I’m fine,” Danzo said, raising his chin stubbornly in the air. The light in his eyes was the softest that Tsume had ever seen.

“Whoa,” said Kushina, not looking away from Aunt Natsumi’s carnage. “Did she just punt that head clear over the other side of the hill?”

The Uchiha girl sighed wistfully. “Isn’t it _amazing_?”

Tsume swiveled her head away from Danzo and Kagami in time to see Aunt Natsumi rip off another head and toss it casually over her shoulder.

Tsume saw Fugaku glaring at her from the corner of her eye. Tsume really had no idea what she did four months ago that would make Fugaku still be angry with her. Honestly, he didn’t tend to stay angry at her for very long. ( _“A wasted effort. Besides, the more tickets you get, the more fines you owe the Police, and the more we can make you clean the station to pay off the fines whenever they exceed your allowance. By the way, stop putting the rolls of toilet paper on backwards. You are exceeding the limits of Yakumi’s medicine and therapy.”_

_“I still don’t see why you keep him around. He keeps buying all the wrong cleaning products. I told Yakumi-san that white vinegar works just fine and can be used on everything. Do you think he does it on purpose because he knows how strong the products smell to me?”_

_“Nah. He just doesn’t like to cross-contaminate, even with products. As neurotic and OCD as he is, I’ll have you know that paperwork in the Police Department is exemplary because of him. Don’t be putting away the mop yet, Tsume. You missed a spot there in the corner.”_

_“I did not!”_

_“I can see it with my Sharingan. Hop to it girl, you still have another four hours of janitorial work to pay off your fine.”_ )

The girls sighed in delight as Aunt Natsumi slaughtered the last remaining Kumo nin – a half dozen had fled, and she wasn’t bothering to give chase. She circled the camp for a few moments, and then put both fists on her hips. “HEY. YOU GUYS BETTER NOT HAVE TRIED DITCHING ME AGAIN. WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYONE?”

“Tsume.” She turned to Danzo. “Are the surroundings safe?”

She made a show of sniffing. “Free and clear of enemies.” She froze as Aunt Natsumi yelled about what she was going to do if the Uchiha didn’t come back for her.

“Is that even possible?” Kushina asked in awe, pressing an uncertain finger against her lips.

The eldest Uchiha grinned. “You betcha. The Kiri nin actually threw himself at the inugami and begged to be eaten.”

Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose, and then waved Tsume off. “Go to your aunt. Maybe that will appease her.”

Tsume jumped off the wall. The four ninken clustered around and followed at her heel as she dashed forward. Behind, she distantly heard one of the twins say, “Simpleton Tsume off playing fetch again. Some things never change.”

Tsume ignored the twinge of resentment that as she and the ninken ran through the snow and grass. Her legs quickly became wet, and her footing was surprisingly slippery. She smelled the excitement and wariness of the ninken, unhindered by the presence of inugami or the Kurama genjutsu. “Aunt Natsumi!” she yelled. She nearly tripped over a groundhog hole, but Ichi nudged her upright. “Aunt Natsumi!”

“TSUME? WHERE ARE YOU?”

Tsume followed her nose through the grass to Aunt Natsumi, who dismissed her summon creatures before they could gobble Tsume’s soul. Aunt Natsumi must’ve followed her ears, because they met half-way across the field. The world seemed to stop for just a moment as Aunt Natsumi dropped her ax, scooped Tsume into a bone-cracking hug, and spun her about in mid-air, laughing and crying at the same time. Aunt Natsumi felt solid and smelled of love (and fresh blood, adrenaline, excitement, and anger). 

“Let me look at you,” Aunt Natsumi set Tsume on the ground and held her at arm’s length. The mass of scar tissue bisecting her face crinkled as she frowned unhappily and touched Tsume’s face with both hands. Her touch trailed to the pit of Tsume’s throat, where the hand-shaped bruise was still present, and hadn’t yet started to fade from its purple and dark gray mottling. “What happened to you?” Her voice became harsh as the scent of fear flooded from Aunt Natsumi’s pores. She touched the uncovered bite wound that had scabbed over. “Who hurt you like this?”

“He’s dead, Aunt Natsumi – Sakumo-sensei killed him. Gosh, I missed you!” Tsume pressed her upper body against Aunt Natsumi’s mostly-bare torso and looped her left arm around Aunt Natsumi’s neck in a clumsy hug, ignoring the smear of blood and paint. Aunt Natsumi wore breast bindings, which Tsume was pretty sure wasn’t part of the clan’s traditional wear, but figured it was probably meant to keep Aunt Natsumi warm. Their breath fogged in the frigid air.

Aunt Natsumi didn’t return Tsume’s hug. Tsume felt her own body go tense. “ _He_ hurt you.” Aunt Natsumi’s voice was almost a shapeless growl. Aunt Natsumi framed Tsume’s face with her hands, and pushed back to study Tsume. Fear was quickly being replaced with rage. “I’ll _kill_ him.”

Tsume saw the wrath in Aunt Natsumi’s eyes, and felt the ninken go tense around her, their heads lowered and their fur bristling. The ninken’s scents shifted into fear and anger. It suddenly occurred to Tsume that Aunt Natsumi probably knew the language of her sister’s ninken better than Tsume did, even without the ability to detect the shifting scents. _Tattletales!_ “He’s already dead,” she said firmly, and then glared sideways at Ichi.

“I’ll just use the Edo Tensei to kill this man all over again.” Aunt Natsumi loomed over Tsume. “And then I’ll bring him back, and kill him again, and again, _and again.”_

Uh oh. This didn’t bode well if Aunt Natsumi ever found out about Danzo.

“Don’t, please,” Tsume cried, throwing her arms around Aunt Natsumi’s waist. “Don’t. Leave the dead _dead_.” She imagined a whole line of people taking numbers so each could have a turn at killing Daisuke. “It wasn’t that bad—”

“ _Not_ that **_bad_**?!”

Tsume flushed hot at the memory. “Being raped didn’t hurt as much as Sakumo-sensei seeing it, Aunt Natsumi!” Her eyes began stinging as she thought of Sakumo’s shattered expression when he received the blast tags. “And it was over faster than normal—”

“ _Faster_ than **_normal_** _?_ THIS HAPPENED MORE THAN ONCE? WHY DO YOU HAVE A **STANDARD** FOR WHAT A **NORMAL** **RAPE** SHOULD BE?”

Tsume wondered if it was possible to take her foot from her mouth long enough to kick herself with it. She didn’t have much time to wonder, since Aunt Natsumi snatched up Tsume and her ax, and shunshinned across the hill, following the trail through the snow that Tsume and the ninken had made. “SAKUMO. SHOW YOURSELF!” Aunt Natsumi may have lost her sense of smell, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t ruthlessly track and corner her prey like a hound on the fox’s trail when there was an obvious path to follow.

Aunt Natsumi broke through the Kurama genjutsu without any change to her level of wrath, and leaped the stone wall in a single bound. Tsume dangled from her grasp, babbling desperately to redirect Aunt Natsumi’s attention. “It was only _once_ , Aunt Natsumi, really!” She cringed as onlookers turned their attention on them. It was just as embarrassing as the whispers that rippled through the ranks after Sakumo deposited her at the top of the ravine to face the two medics alone.

“You!” Aunt Natsumi struck the ground with her ax, splitting it open when she saw Sakumo. “I require a _word_ with you, Hatake.” And then to Tsume, her grip tightening in warning. “Once is one time too many.”

“But you don’t understand—!”

Aunt Natsumi tore the ax from the ground and leveled it at Sakumo. “Where _were_ you?” she screamed.

Tsume threw her arms around Aunt Natsumi’s ax arm. She dangled in the air with a chakra enhanced grip, even though it made the broken bones and half-healed tenketsu in her hand throb with more pain. “ _I_ disobeyed Danzo’s orders, so it’s my fault—”

The ax swung around to point at Danzo. Juubi laid his ears back in warning as Tsume kicked her feet in the aim, swinging like a pendulum. “I want a _word_ with you, too, _brat_!”

“—there were _forty-two_ Iwa nin! I couldn’t just leave Danzo to fight them alone—”

Sakumo held up placating hands to Natsumi, carefully keeping them away from his weapons. “I would’ve torn the world apart to keep her safe…”

“—SUPPOSED TO WATCH MY NIECE—”

“—and I had Grandmother’s ninken, so I was already armed to the teeth—”

“…I don’t blame you for being so angry, but can you please yell at me in private elsewhere?…”

“—NO CHILD SHOULD EVER HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT—”

Danzo and Kagami silently exchanged a look. Danzo impatiently flapped his hand at Kagami; Kagami rolled his eyes upward and sighed as his fingers flashed through multiple seals. “You _owe_ me for this, Danzo.” A waterfall drenched Aunt Natsumi, Sakumo, and Tsume.

“YOU.” Aunt Natsumi swiveled the point of her ax at Kagami and swiped the plastered wet hair away from her face. “ARE NOT INVITED.”

Kagami tucked his free arm into his sling as he smiled. “Well, that’s certainly true. Nobody _ever_ invites Internal Affairs. We’re not exactly the life of the party, even though I always look the other way when someone spikes the punch. But I’m sure that Mifune-dono wants the camp to start moving while we still have daylight, so we’ll need to let Danzo and Sakumo decide what to do with the reinforcements. Now.” After a slight pause, he added, “The reinforcements includes _you._ The Uchiha should probably scout ahead, but it’s best if your summons can communicate between each other and the wagon train.”

Aunt Natsumi slammed the ax into the ground. A small crater formed beneath the impact. Tsume slid off the ax to the ground with a solid thump. “ _My_ priority has always been Tsume. Do not make yourself an obstacle between us, Uchiha Kagami. I will _crush_ you.”

Kagami slowly walked towards Aunt Natsumi, pointedly brushed past her with his bound arm, and then squatted down until he was eye-level with Tsume. “From the sounds of it, it looks like I need to address this sooner rather than later, and _you_ need to cool off before you hurt someone – like your niece. It appears that this young lady has already been through a lot, so let’s not add to it with even more of a public spectacle.” Tsume saw her reflection in his dark eyes, surrounded by crow’s feet. “Tsume-san? I am Uchiha Kagami, and I’ve always wanted to meet you.”

Tsume took in his scent; it was as light as Danzo’s was dark. Most of the Uchiha that Tsume met didn’t particularly like her – they were such stuffy duds – but this one seemed pleasant and friendly enough, and didn’t stink of deceit the way that Madame Haori had. Sakumo said that this man was Danzo’s old teammate – Danzo had the scent of love for Kagami, and she had never known Danzo to ever bear the odor of love before. “Thank you,” she replied, when it seemed like Kagami was waiting for a response.

The crow’s feet deepened as he smiled at her. “Your reputation precedes you. I’ve heard much of you from my clanspeople.” Kagami assisted her upright to a standing position, his one arm helping her with her one arm. She felt an instant kinship with Kagami and his sling.

Tsume shuffled a toe against the ground as she felt Aunt Natsumi and Danzo’s glares burn into her scalp. She kept her gaze on Kagami’s face. “Most of it is _probably_ true,” she mumbled.

“Indeed.” Kagami straightened. “‘Bull-busting Tsume’, they call you.”

Oh. Well, that was certainly different from Simpleton Tsume. Had a better ring to it, too. She tried not to preen.

Kagami ignored Aunt Natsumi’s mutter of, “ _I’ll_ show you ball-busting.”

He held his unbound hand out to Tsume and waited until she accepted it. His grip was firm and gentle. “Danzo, a place for privacy, if you would.”

Danzo nodded Sakumo towards the Uchiha as he urged Juubi forward. “This way.” He and Kagami were silent as Danzo trotted to his and Sakumo’s shared wagon. Grandmother’s ninken followed after, but Tsume made San stay for Kokoro. Activity flared into a loud bustle as people began clearing the camp site., most of them smelling of second-hand embarrassment from Natsumi’s very public outburst. Tsume felt her face and shoulders flush red with shared embarrassment. A driver was preparing Danzo’s wagon for hitching just as they arrived.

“Anything I should be aware of?” Kagami asked as he lifted Tsume one-armed into the wagon, over the raised tailgate. His face was neutral as he turned to Danzo, but Tsume sensed a swell of… something. She couldn’t tell if it was a good swell or a bad swell, since his scent didn’t seem to shift from its odor of friendly calm.

Danzo was quiet for a moment, and then rubbed a spot on his forehead just above the bridge of his nose. “Kagami – I beg your honesty, despite our ranks and the classification involved. If you’ve ever had any regard for our kinship… Are you aware of Tetsuzanshi?” No one was close by to overhear Danzo’s words.

“Somewhat, given the rank and age of the participant. I had to give approval for certain details as the Hokage worked them out.”

Danzo’s face remained still, but his scent shifted dangerously, love and respect withering into a strange combination of despair and hatred. His grip on Juubi’s reigns went white-knuckled as his spine relaxed. “I see. I never expected you to _stoop_ so low, my friend.” He turned Juubi’s head away with a harsh snap of his wrist. “Then again, you are every bit as Uchiha as _Madara_.” He spat the name as if it left a foul taste.

“Danzo, wait.”

Danzo dug his heels into Juubi to quicken the trot. Tsume felt a looming cold leaning against her shoulders as Danzo disappeared from sight. 

“I think you pissed off Danzo,” Tsume said helpfully as Kagami climbed into the wagon with a sigh. “I don’t even know how you did it, and I’m saying that as a person who usually knows how she pisses people off.” Ichi and Ni leapt inside, and Shi settled on the ground outside, looking alert and ready.

Kagami rooted around in Sakumo’s supplies until he found a few candle stubs and lit them with a light puff of fire from his lips. He dropped the wagon’s back flap to muffle sound, and sat down beside Tsume on one of the oat sacks. “Danzo has always been easy to offend for reasons known only to himself,” Kagami said, leaning back. “For someone who disdains emotions, he certainly cycles through them quite rapidly.” He flashed through multiple hand seals – one handed – that made the walls of the wagon glow blue for a moment. Tsume felt a pressure build between her ears. “That’ll keep things private.” Kagami braced his unbound elbow against his knee and rested his chin on the heel of his hand. “Do you know what Internal Affairs does, Tsume-san?”

Ichi rested his massive head on Tsume’s lap. She scratched behind his ears. It looked like he had some grime in them. He was still a little clumsy on his feet, his equilibrium not quite restored. “Internal Affairs makes sure that people like ANBU and the police don’t hurt the civilians.” That was how Tsume understood the explanation from Academy. “Because shinobi are so much stronger than civilians, Internal Affairs makes sure that the shinobi follows a code of ethics, especially against those who are much weaker and can’t defend themselves. And ninja clans have different standards for what constitutes as child abuse from civilians.” Children of ninja clans were trained from an early age, and it wasn’t unusual for them to be injured in the training. Apparently, there was a fine line between what was considered acceptable training, and what was considered abuse.

Tsume suspected that investigations were limited to _physical_ abuse, given how emotionally and verbally abusive Grandmother had been over the years with not a single Uchiha policeman stepping forward. (Although, come to think of it, Fugaku had a tendency to make her work her fines off, rather than reporting her infarctions to her guardian, as usually required by law. She wondered if that meant Fugaku was secretly nice… nah. He was still a jerk-butt. He probably didn’t feel like constantly reporting her to Grandmother.)

“Something like that, yes. Police investigates civilian matters, and the lawbreaking of off-duty shinobi. Internal Affairs investigates reports and suspicions of lawbreaking, misconduct, and abuse by on-duty shinobi. In short, _I_ police the police and ANBU. I also represent genin and chuunin who are orphaned, clanless, or civilian-born, because they have no one to speak up on their behalf. The Hokage believes, as do I, that the powerful have the responsibility to protect the vulnerable, that someone like Danzo should watch after someone like you. I’m also consulted regarding highly-sensitive missions where there’s a strong potential for abuse or exploitation of minors.”

That was good. Tsume had always thought that the Hokage was a nice man.

“It would seem that Danzo has done his best to watch after you, and per my recollection, he _isn’t_ supposed to have any knowledge or involvement with the Tetsuzanshi Op in the first place. But I see that’s not important to you, right now. Rather, do you know what upset your great-aunt and Danzo?”

Tsume checked Ichi’s paws. The pads were still only partially healed from skidding down the ravine walls, and still tender where he was missing his claws. “I just do what I’m told, sir. Well, usually I do. I didn’t do what I was told last time because Danzo ordered me to go back to the wagon train and let them know that forty-two Iwa nin were approaching. Instead, I sent Shi off with a message and followed after Danzo, because he was going to face those forty-two nin alone, and I couldn’t let that happen!”

Kagami sighed and looked mildly exasperated. “Danzo can be a real idiot sometimes.”

Tsume nodded her head vigorously, thrilled that someone _finally_ saw things her way. “Exactly! Grandmother’s ninken and I took out a lot of enemy nin when we got there, and Danzo even admitted that he would’ve died if I didn’t come! Anyway, Sakumo and the others also came, and none of us died.”

“But you were raped before they got there.”

Tsume resumed inspecting Ichi’s paws. It was important to make sure they didn’t get infected, and it was hard to see in the dark wagon. She channeled some additional chakra into her eyes. “It went faster than I’m used to though, and I worked with what I had.” She tugged at Ichi’s ears again. She needed to make sure they were clean so Ichi’s hearing wasn’t affected. After a moment of distraction, Tsume risked a peep at Kagami. He still rested his face on the heel of his hand, and his eyes were sad.

Gosh. His hair looked really, really soft. Was it as soft as Minato’s?

Kagami’s gaze flickered red, but remained Sharingan-free, as he studied Tsume and the ninken, and then he reached forward to tug a spiky lock of Tsume’s hair. “Would you feel more comfortable if a woman was in here, if you weren’t left alone with me? I would gladly suffer your aunt’s presence and temper if it makes you feel safe.”

“No, I’m okay.” Tsume glanced at Ichi and Ni. Neither seemed wary with Kagami. “I’m not scared, and you smell nice.”

Kagami looked a little sheepish as he then combed his fingers through his gray-streaked curls. “Do I? I haven’t had a chance to wash since leaving Konoha.”

“I know. But your personal scent – it’s a nice scent.” In her experience, Danzo wasn’t any fonder of the Uchiha Clan than Tsume. If she and Danzo could’ve bonded over anything, it would’ve been over that. It seemed so bizarre that Danzo would be so fond of _Uchiha Kagami_. “You’re married to Danzo’s sister.”

“Half-sister, but yes. Danzo was never particularly close to her. He’s much closer to me, as his old teammate, than he is to Fumiko as siblings.”

“Is it because she married an Uchiha?”

“No, nothing at all like that. I think he was more disappointed in _me_ for marrying her, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Danzo’s father died in battle, and his mother was pregnant by another man two months _before_ his father’s death. Danzo resented his mother for this betrayal, and some of that resentment bled onto Fumiko. But it wasn’t Fumiko’s fault – she didn’t have a choice in who her father was or what her mother did.”

Within the closed confines of the wagon, she could definitely smell that he was in ill health. It was a scent that wasn’t rare with older adults, but Hidarime had never explained anything when Tsume had asked in the past. Tsume decided not to ask Kagami – it might embarrass him, the way that having chlamydia embarrassed Tsume. “I like your scent. It’s a scent I can trust.” She eyed him as a sudden suspicion entered her mind. “Wait. This isn’t some kind of seal, is it?” If she could have a seal that made men lust after her, then Kagami could have a seal that could make people trust him. Grandmother was always complaining about Internal Affairs sticking their snooping noses in unwelcome areas, so Tsume figured that such a seal would be a really useful thing to have if your business was to check on everyone else’s business.

Kagami laughed. “No seal. I do what I do because I believe what the Second Hokage taught me – to protect the weak and the vulnerable. Shinobi have a great power, and great power sometimes attracts unsavory characters. My mother’s uncle, Madara, had great power. And, unfortunately, an even greater darkness in his heart. What do _you_ know about seals?”

“I don’t, really.” Tsume remembered an old voice and the surrounding redness. “Just that… well, sometimes, they can be useful enough for you, but other times, they’re not worth the pain or the hassle.”

Kagami carefully poked through her hair. “I see you have spikes woven in your hair. It’s a good choice.”

“Yeah, Danzo helped me. I don’t want anyone to grab my hair and smash my face. That happened to me, in the ravine. The other man broke my nose, and then I couldn’t smell anything.”

“And an Inuzuka nose is her livelihood. Do you like being a kunoichi?”

Tsume couldn’t imagine what life would be like if she wasn’t a kunoichi. She thought of her older brother, Subaru, apprenticed to a local butcher, and she thought of his dog, Jet. She thought of a variety of Inuzuka women, too disabled to be kunoichi, who helped with the ninken and children, especially cousin Shinchuu. “Sure.” A kunoichi was way better than a butcher. Or, well, considering the spine she ripped out… maybe a kunoichi was sometimes nothing more than a butcher of humans. At least Subaru’s work fed people.

“You’re a genin now. Do you see yourself one day becoming a jounin, or even a teacher like Sakumo-sensei?”

Tsume had never thought about it. She barely even thought about being the Clan Head, and knew it was probably something she should focus on. “I don’t know.” She marveled at being a jounin sensei like Sakumo, of having a gaggle of children like Kakashi. Then she wondered why he kept changing the subject. “Why aren’t you asking me any questions about the Black Ops that never was?”

Kagami considered her again for another moment; his scent swelled and settled. “To be perfectly honest, I‘ve been trying to build rapport and encouraging you to lead the conversation.” He tilted his head to the side and rested his unbound hand in his lap. “Did you know that you were supposed to be the kennel keeper’s apprentice?”

Tsume frowned in confusion. “But Madame Haori didn’t like her girls going anywhere near the dogs…” She felt her eyes sting, and she didn’t know why, so she shifted the extra chakra away from them. It didn’t ease the stinging.

“It was something that the Hokage and I had arranged. The Madame was trying to procure more dogs, fresh ones for training and breeding, and you were supposed to supply the dogs, and assist the kennel keeper in their training.”

“I was a prostitute.” Tsume’s mind whirled as she pushed Ichi’s head off her lap and drew her knees up. “Orochimaru had Grandmother sell me.” And Madame Haori had sneered and turned her nose up, saying that Tsume was too ugly for what Madame Haori normally bought, but war increased the demand on her goods, and she needed more, _younger,_ goods.

A thousand ryo was all that Madame Haori was willing to cough up for ugly little simpleton Tsume.

Madame Haori had eagerly paid over a hundred thousand ryo for five sleek hounds a week after Tsume’s arrival.

She hunched behind her knees and her voice broke. “I was supposed to be with the dogs?” She thought of Grandmother and Orochimaru, the look on Sakumo’s face when she gave him the blast tags, and Danzo as he shoved her against the bleached boulders when she offered to fuck Orochimaru. It felt like someone was repeatedly punching her in the heart.

Kagami sighed as he leaned back against the oat sacks, stretching his legs out languidly. “I am sorry that Konoha failed you, Tsume.”

Tsume blinked back tears as she stared at the candles. Her jaw trembled, so she clenched her teeth. It was hard to breathe. She felt the looming cold beneath her, an emptiness hovering just beyond her shoulder blades. If she wasn’t supposed to be sold to the brothel, then she wouldn’t have received the seal on her toe. Without the seal, Daisuke would never have raped her, and then Sakumo would never have seen what she desperately wished he hadn’t seen. She rubbed at her eyes. “G-grandmother said she loved me.” A fancy little lie without a whiff of deceit, and Tsume had swallowed it – hook, line, and sinker.

She viciously wished she had kicked Grandmother’s cot _twice_.

Kagami hugged her close; the looming cold retreated at his touch. She buried her face against her knees and tried hard not to cry. She focused on breathing – in and out. In and out. “You are a very brave, very strong kunoichi,” he said, touching his chin carefully on the top of her head twice before finally resting on a spot that didn’t jab him. “And despite what happened, you still succeeded with your mission. Not many people can carry on successfully when their superiors screw up.”

Tsume didn’t know if that was supposed to be a good thing or not. Ichi nudged her elbow and whined. “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.

“That’s fine. We can talk about whatever you want.”

When Kagami remained silent, Tsume peeked at him. He stared at the candles with a look that reminded her of Minato. Maybe that was why she felt an immediate liking for this Uchiha – he had that quiet, bright center that effortlessly pushed back the void. She snuggled close to his side, rubbing her cheek against the rough wool of his red coat because it made the cold nothingness shrink down until it was nothing more than just a shadow of a pin. “Who’s Madara?” she asked. “Grandmother mentioned him before she died.”

Kagami’s voice was wry. “I’m sure she did. Inuzuka Shinzou always said that she smelled Madara in the Nara Forest the day you were found. My mother’s father was Madara’s younger brother, Izuna. Madara went rogue some years after the founding of Konoha. Rather infamous, as ancestors go, so I’m sure you’ve heard of him before, although we’ve done our best to, uh, downplay his role in history because of what happened. He fought with the First Hokage and lost, but not before changing the landscape or wounding the First so severely that Hashirama had to retire and hand the Hokage hat over to his brother. They say that Hashirama died from the wounds, but I remember him. I think Hashirama died of a broken heart.”

“I don’t know if it _was_ Madara, but I remember meeting an old Uchiha.” Tsume closed her eyes. “He asked me if I knew what they say about curiosity and cats. I said no, I’m an Inuzuka, and we don’t have cats. He said that didn’t matter because dogs die just like cats do. He had white hair and red eyes, except they were different. Instead of the three commas, he had three red circles in a triangle.” She tried drawing the shape in the air with her finger, but her finger couldn’t quite recreate what her mind remembered. “And there were three black stripes, too, in his eyes, with the circles and triangle.”

Kagami’s scent coiled, shifting to surprise as the coil became a spike. “The _eternal Mangekyo Sharingan._ ”

“Is that important?”

He sucked a breath through his teeth. “There are very few people in living memory who would know what it looks like. My mother knew. She drew it for me, once.”

“Oh.” Tsume decided that she very much liked Uchiha Kagami. The sound of his heart where her ear was pressed against his torso was reassuring, even if it seemed _sloshy_. “It was very pretty, especially when it began to spin.” Of course, that was when the pain also started, so maybe it wasn’t such a pretty thing. “Wait. If he was an Uchiha, how did he get into the Nara Forest?”

“Madara was a very talented ninja.”

Tsume supposed that he would have to be, to get into a fight with the First Hokage and live. She considered her knees in the dim light. “Why would he hurt me?”

“Madara was also a very ruthless ninja. Let’s just say that it wasn’t the first time that an Uchiha has deliberately targeted a young child with intent to maim or kill, although usually they were Senju children. We generally stayed away from the Inuzuka women and their daughters because there are few people in the world who can be more terrifying than a rampaging mother bear. Especially an entire clan of them.” He snorted. “An entire clan of naked rampaging mother bears with absolutely no personal boundaries when it comes to their sexuality.”

Tsume felt a looming cold over her shoulder again. _Why me?_ She wished that Minato could be here, with his sunshine bright smile. She reached out with her left hand and pawed Kagami’s hair. It was silky and soft – nothing at all like her stiff, wiry hair. Kagami allowed her exploration, smiling with a gentle indulgence so she knew that her touch was welcome. “Gosh,” she said, knotting her fingers in his curls and sniffling, “you have… you have dandelion fluff, too.” Then she pushed her face into the crook of his neck, tightened her fingers so they wouldn’t leave his hair, and bawled. Kagami kept his arm wrapped around her, and gave her the comforting affection that Grandmother had always withheld.

oOoOoOo

The travel back to Konoha was mostly without event. Well, between Aunt Natsumi, the Uchiha reinforcements, and Aunt Natsumi’s creative summons (Tsume would never look at a goose again without feeling her rarely-used self-preservation poking its head up as a quick reminder of its actual existence) enemies were not an issue, at least.

“I feel weird,” Kushina said, glancing around their campfire on the third night. Kagami had planted himself right between Danzo and Sakumo, Aunt Natsumi was growling at Sakumo, Mikoto stared at Aunt Natsumi with a lovelorn expression, Danzo glared at Kagami, and Fugaku was giving Tsume the stink eye. The eldest Uchiha – Nashi and Obito – were also present, and also seemed oblivious to the tension, although Obito seemed to have no problem metaphorically poking the situation. Nashi told him to stop being such a gadfly.

“Me too,” Tsume told Kushina, rubbing her cast and wishing her broken limb would heal faster.

Kagami was as placid and calm as the surface of a pond on a quiet afternoon summer. He was also extremely good at being oblivious to tension. Tsume wondered if this was something he deliberately cultivated, or if it just came naturally to dandelion fluffheads. “The tea is really quite lovely tonight,” he told Nashi as he sipped from the blue cup. “You’re _always_ outdoing yourself.”

Aunt Natsumi abruptly stood. “I want a word with Tsume in private.” She glared down at Kagami, as if challenging him to stop her. Kagami somehow managed to keep steering Natsumi away from private moments with Tsume ever since their arrival.

“I want a word, too!” Tsume said, also jumping to her feet before Kagami could distract Aunt Natsumi again. “Well, actually, lots of words. What?” Kagami studied Tsume from across the fire; the flames highlighted the bone structure in his face. As red glinted in his eyes, a brief image superimposed itself over Kagami’s face – white spiky hair, spinning Sharingan, a relaxed face free of menace or the looming agony that would soon follow – and Tsume rubbed her eyes. _Where did that come from?_

“Have fun,” Kagami said with a shrug and a sip of his tea. “Try not to kill anyone out there,” he added for Aunt Natsumi’s benefit as she grabbed Tsume by her upper arm. Grandmother’s ninken followed as Aunt Natsumi led Tsume away from the wagon camp, into the thick forest of baron oaks. They were within a day and a half of reaching Konoha, and Tsume missed Kakashi and Kuromaru so much that it hurt.

“Sit down with me, child,” Aunt Natsumi said when they reached a fallen tree, half-rotted away and covered with a thick moss. Aunt Natsumi sat on the tree, resting her ax on the ground with her hands crisscrossed over the handle. “I want to apologize,” she began as Tsume plopped herself beside Aunt Natsumi and leaned sideways so she could rest her head against Aunt Natsumi’s shoulder. “Sakumo told me when you were on patrol earlier today with Mikoto that making a big scene in front of you was hurtful and embarrassing. I’m sorry for adding to your pain like that. I know I would’ve been… upset if my sister had said the same things in public after what I went through, when we finally settled in Konoha.”

Tsume snuggled close against Aunt Natsumi’s arm. The painted skin felt cold in the night air. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.” Patrolling with Uchiha Mikoto turned out to be way better than Tsume would’ve hoped. Mikoto reminded Tsume of Hidarime – from the gentle serenity and smiles, to the smooth long hair that Mikoto even let Tsume braid when they stopped for a quick lunch break. Tsume decided that Mikoto was the second-best Uchiha she ever met, even though Mikoto kept trying to talk about Aunt Natsumi

Aunt Natsumi laughed. “I’m not really sure that you’re capable of getting angry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you lose your temper, even before the brain injury. Sakumo said that there’s more to what happened than what meet’s the eye, including your disappearance four months ago. I suspect my sister was involved in the worst way.” A tremble ran through Aunt Natsumi’s body. Beneath the body paint on Aunt Natsumi’s arms, Tsume watched as hairs rose on end. “When I heard that you were dead, I knew, in my heart, that my sister had taken away yet another child of mine. I always thought the gods were punishing me, to take away my daughters, only to give them back to me as sons, and then I lost them once more. Always have I lost my dear children.

“Nearly an entire lifetime passed, and then you are born, right into a family with a _father_. I thought, this must also be an omen from the gods that the time of our clan is drawing near the end, for an Inuzuka daughter to be with another clan. But then Shinzou demanded your return, tore you away from the mother that accepted you as her own, and then ripped the pack away from its home. Shinzou never gave any thought to the recklessness of her own actions. She demanded a heavy price for you, and then decided that you weren’t worth the price after your injury, when she realized that you were even more damaged than I was.

“But that was when I realized that I had misread the omen of your birth. Just as you were reborn on your father’s soil, so will our pack be reborn in you. It will be costly, and it will never be the same, but I know that the pack will be renewed in you. Oh, how grateful I am that you’re alive! You’ve always been my favorite, you know.”

“I’m here,” Tsume said. Ichi rested his head on Aunt Natsumi’s lap and looked up at her with soulful eyes. Their surroundings were quiet, except for the distant murmur of voices from the wagon train. “Grandmother told me that she l-loved me.” The words left a bitter aftertaste in Tsume’s mouth as she thought, _I should’ve been with Madame Sora, not Madame Haori._

“I know.” Aunt Natsumi snaked an arm around Tsume’s shoulders. “But Shinzou is dead – and with her, the old clan dies. I will support you every step of the way, and give you everything that you need to be the clan head that my sister should’ve been – the clan head that the gods have promised me.”

Tsume hoped that the gods didn’t speak directly to Aunt Natsumi. “Okay.”

“Sakumo told me I cannot ask questions of what happened, that it’s safer for you if I didn’t know. I don’t know how much of his judgment I should trust though. He also said that Danzo is the one who found and brought you back, and that no matter what else I ever learn or think of that brat, I should always remember that the only reason you’re back in my life is because of Danzo. Sakumo also said I should never forget that Danzo still has a heavy price to pay for returning you.”

Tsume bumped her feet together, and thought of how Orochimaru had benched Danzo because he was supposed to leave Tsume at the brothel. She thought of how much Danzo would have to pay because of her, and then wondered if that debt was actually _hers_. “Danzo rescued me, Aunt Natsumi. He wasn’t supposed to, and I think he’s in a lot of trouble for it.” She pulled away from Aunt Natsumi. “Can I have a summon? Please?”

“Do you want the summon because of what happened to you? You’ll need larger chakra stores before it can be effective.”

“Danzo said that he didn’t have a summon because no one trusts him.”

Aunt Natsumi eyed Tsume. “The brat was open and honest enough to actually _say_ that to you?”

Tsume shrugged and rubbed her heels against the ground. “He implied it, I think. I want him to know that I trust him, no matter what, so I figured that if I signed a contract, then I could give it to Danzo as a present. He saved me from an awful life, and I don’t know if I could ever repay that.” She caught a hint of Kakashi’s scent on the wind – her eyes burned with tears as she thought of how she was so close to Kakashi because Danzo chose to disobey Orochimaru’s orders.

Danzo was bringing Tsume home – home to Kakashi, home to Kuromaru, home to _Konoha_.

Aunt Natsumi pressed her scarred forehead against Tsume’s. “You don’t have to sign a contract to give it to Danzo as a gift. To be honest, I want you to reverse-summon before you sign anything – that’s the best way of finding out what your guardian is, after they put you through a trial to prove your worthiness. But if you don’t have enough chakra to successfully reverse-summon yourself, you will be forever banned from any other summon. Once rejected, you’ll forever be closed off.”

Tsume touched Aunt Natsumi’s breast bindings. “Did you reverse-summon and get otters?”

“Nah. I paint the otters to honor Tobirama – water was his element. Whales are my guardians.”

“Oh.” Tsume rubbed her nose. That would explain why Hiji probably wound up with guppies. Or llamas. She wasn’t sure which, and Tsume really hoped that she didn’t wind up with a lousy summon, like guppies. “How come I never see you summon whales?”

“Know of any place with a body of water large enough to fit a whale? Yeah, that’s why you never see me summon them. Good things to have when you’re stuck on the ocean, but kinda useless in a desert or a forest, unless you’re trying to squash someone.” Aunt Natsumi adjusted her breast bindings. “I’ll give you a contract to give to Danzo. It can be a gift from both of us.” She pulled her knapsack close and startled rifling through it.

“Danzo said that he helped you with your battle paints.”

“Indeed. Tobirama and I never had any more children after… Well, neither of us had any children. Tobi said he barely had enough energy to keep up with me, so handling _two_ women was simply too much for him. He never had the opportunity to sire any other heirs.” Aunt Natsumi opened a contract, peered at its contents, and then shoved it back into her knapsack with a shake of her head. “Danzo’s older brothers and his father were dead when Tobi took Danzo’s team, and Tobi took it upon himself to be a father figure of sorts. I decided that if Tobi could be a father figure, then I could be a mother figure.”

Gosh. If Danzo was Aunt Natsumi’s… son figure, then did that make her and Danzo cousin figures? It was kinda like how the Uchiha clan generally kept it in the clan. It suddenly made the sex between them seem so much more awkward than before. 

“That, and it irritated Shinzou to no end that I was letting Danzo assist me with my battle paints. He was a good kid. Really sincere – threw himself heart and soul into _everything_. I think he tried hard to kill that part of himself after Tobi died, and I’m glad to know he still has it in him – even if it is deep down.” She considered for a moment. “ _Really_ deep down. Ah, here we are.” Aunt Natsumi opened Tsume’s hand and placed a scroll in it. “Your death was a nightmare come true to me. This is a contract for mystical creatures that are guardians of children. They are nightmare eaters. You say that Danzo brought you back? Then my lover’s apprentice returned my chosen heir. Danzo took away my nightmare. And despite Danzo being scary enough sometimes to qualify as his own nightmare, I’ve always known that the Second’s favorite apprentice could be a good man.”

Tsume threw her arms around Aunt Natsumi and hugged her tight. “Thank you,” she whispered. She marveled at the combined hardness and softness of Aunt Natsumi, and hoped that one day she would be the same. “So, when do I get to do this reverse-summon?”

Aunt Natsumi sniffed. “Not until we get back to Konoha, and then maybe another year or so. If you disappear in mid-route, I’ll never hear the end of it from Sakumo and Danzo. Not that you have enough chakra to be successful, but it’s kinda hard to tell with the way you’re so battered. Give yourself time to heal, kid.”

oOoOoOo

They arrived at Konoha two days later. Kakashi and Kuromaru – along with eight summon dogs – were sitting outside Konoha’s gates. They didn’t run to meet the wagon train, but Kakashi laughed and held his arms wide when he saw Tsume. “You’re back! You’re back!” She swept him up in a bone-crushing hug. The wagon train rolled passed them through the great gates, but a small crowd managed to surround Tsume and Kakashi.

“I’m so glad to see you!” Tsume cried, burying her nose in his gravity-defying cowlicks. “You smell so nice!” He smelled like home and dog saliva and love. It was wonderful and marvelous and it made her heart sing with delight. Kuromaru stood up and put his paws on her shoulders, eagerly licking Tsume’s face. His growls almost sounded like human words.

_You’re back! You’re back!_

“Hi,” said the little pug at Tsume’s feet. She peered over Kakashi’s hair at him. “I don’t know who you are, but I missed you too. I’m Pakkun.”

“Pakkun?” Sakumo joined their little crowd. He turned slowly to look at Aunt Natsumi, his expression mildly confused. “My dear Aunt Natsumi,” he began, very carefully, “when you told me that you had entrusted my son to the care of a lovely young gentleman named _Pakkun_ , I was under the impression that it was… an adult.”

“I’m an adult,” Pakkun said defensively. He had a permanently sad look on his face, even though he smelled of joy and hope. “And I’m better than most humans. Your pup was kept well-fed and watered, and we went for daily walks. I would’ve had him housebroken by now if he wasn’t already.”

Sakumo glared down at Pakkun as he accepted Kakashi from Tsume. “His clothes are _dirty_ and he smells like a dog. When was the last time he was changed?” Kakashi pressed his face against the side of his father’s neck, arms clinging tight.

Pakkun held up a paw as Bull lolled his splotchy tongue at Sakumo. “Buttons require opposable thumbs, and Aunt Bashira was a bitch and refused to help. Something about getting stuck with bears instead of dragons? Anyway, I will have you know that Bull washed and groomed Kakashi _every_ night.”

Tsume reached out and squished the pads on Pakkun’s paw. “It’s so soft!” she squealed.

Kushina shoved Tsume aside. “I wanna touch, too!”

“You may touch me,” Pakkun told Kushina generously, holding his paw out to her.

Sakumo turned back to Aunt Natsumi as Danzo rode up to them. “You left my son in the company of talking _dogs,_ ” he muttered as Kakashi looked around, feet swinging against Sakumo’s side.

Aunt Natsumi just shrugged. “Kakashi chose them.”

“And you _trust_ the judgment of a toddler?”

“Trust had nothing to do with it, Sakumo. As I said, _Kakashi_ chose them. I just supplied the contract for him to sign. Kakashi was the one who summoned them. They were impressed enough to stick around and watch after him until I came back. Look – blame Kagami. I barely had enough time to gather all my supplies, and Bashira was so bitchy about the bear contract that she refused to babysit.”

“He’s very talented,” Pakkun said solemnly as Tsume picked him up in her arms and scratched him behind his ears. “Oh. I like Kakashi’s aunt. She’s my favorite.”

“Yeth,” Kakashi said. “She’th great!”

“We’ve working on Kakashi’s vocabulary too, but he seems to have developed a lisp.”

Sakumo reached up and grabbed Juubi’s saddle. He whimpered as he leaned against Juubi. “Danzooooo. My two year old _summoned.”_

“Don’t come crying to me, you buffoon. I told you that the kid successfully pulled off a henge with Tsume when he was less than a week old, and _you_ bragged about he learned how to chakra-walk up trees when he was barely a year old.” Danzo grunted in pain as he dismounted from Juubi, and dropped the reigns. He patted Sakumo on his head with a condescending air as thick as his ongoing anger. “Congratulations. You have the strongest, most talented two year old in all of Konohagakure. Try not to let it get to your head.”

“The only thing getting to my head right now is the fact that I have the _team_ of genin that I do, and the son that I have. I’m going to need a vacation!”

Danzo cackled. “Well, you already have a team of baby sitters. If they can watch Kakashi, I’m sure that Pakkun and the others would enjoy Tsume, Kushina, and Kokoro.”

“Sure,” said Pakkun, tail wagging as Tsume found another delicious spot beneath his chin.

Tsume hugged Pakkun and Kuromaru close, and thought of how good it was to finally be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, Fugaku was trying to shelter Tsume from her great-grandmother's wrath. Remember Delta Years, Chapter Three?
> 
> "Tsume was also a peripheral matter – most likely because she had such a long, personal history of antagonizing Uchiha Fugaku that he had resigned himself to a lifetime of such abuse. Fugaku would probably suspect that a polite and respectful Tsume was nothing more than a cleverly-disguised enemy. "
> 
> Fugaku is actually fond of Tsume, and trying to do right by her. He just recently joined the police department and didn't have much control over investigating questionable child abuse - especially when it's obvious that no training is actually taking place for Tsume. Tsume is also a source of frustration, having been a pain in his ass ever since he was eighteen years old, and she's a thoughtless eleven year old challenging the recently-obtained authority. 
> 
> I eagerly look forward to the Gamma Years, in which Tsume - pregnant with Kiba - has to pretend to be Fugaku's wife, as they and Shisui and Itachi are disguised as a civilian merchant family, rooting out random stray missing nin left over from the Third Shinobi World War. (Mikoto was reassigned from the mission when she accidentally immolated the horses due to pregnancy hormones wrecking her chakra control.) Fugaku made a name for himself in the Third Shinobi World War - "Wicked-Eye Fugaku" - and I couldn't figure out WHY or HOW Itachi and Shisui would be involved in the war, as young as they were. So this idea popped into my head, and it's been brewing for the last five years.


	22. Alpha Years - Chapter Nineteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've finally figured out what makes Tsume such a great character to write, especially when you compare her to the other canon characters,
> 
> Danzo: /tragedy happens/ I KIDNAP ORPHANS AND BUILD MY OWN UNDERGROUND ARMY. WOE. MANIPULATION. TORTURE.
> 
> Sasuke: /tragedy happens/ MUST BECOME POWERFUL. MISERY. EMO.
> 
> Kakashi: /tragedy happens/ ALL WHOM I LOVE WIND UP DEAD. ANGST. MISERY. GUILT.
> 
> Tsume: /tragedy happens/ Coooool, a horse! :D
> 
> BTW, the Alpha Years clocks in at 170k words. The last two chapters are about 30k together.

It took one day for Mifune and his samurai army to unpack, restock, and depart Konoha, and one day after _that_ for a lone stallion to come trotting up to the gigantic walls of Konoha. One unfortunate chuunin manning the gate nearly had his arm ripped off by said lone stallion when he tried to collect the dangling reigns. Another chuunin had a broken ribcage when the horse kicked him as the second chuunin tried defending the first chuunin.

“Who’s a good Juubi?” Tsume was seated on Juubi’s back and hugged his neck awkwardly, trying to get her right arm around the broad neck as she stroked the silky fur with her left hand. “Yes, _you’re_ a good Juubi!”

Aunt Natsumi watched from the entrance, her arms crossed in front of her. Sakumo had Kakashi balanced on his right hip and looked as uncertain as he smelled. Aunt Bashira, on the other hand, stroked Juubi’s flanks with a look of wonder on her face. “Do you need another carrot?” Aunt Natsumi called. Kuromaru looked torn between staying beside Kakashi, and joining Tsume in the saddle, regardless of how he wouldn’t be able to fit. Sakumo had already sternly nixed Tsume’s brilliant idea of having Kakashi join her.

Tsume giggled with delight and wiggled around on the saddle until it felt like her pelvis wasn’t going to split. Juubi looked like he needed another carrot – and a full bucket of oats, and maybe some alfalfa. Poor Juubi. He must’ve run so far to come back. “Sure!” She caught the carrot that Aunt Natsumi tossed, and then leaned forward, arm outstretched, to offer the carrot within the reach of his teeth. Juubi arched his head and nickered softly before he accepted the carrot. Then he went back to grazing on the long grass growing in the ditch beside the road. Juubi seemed to appreciate how Aunt Bashira stroked his withers.

“Well,” Sakumo began, “I expect to hear word from Mifune-dono as soon as he sends back our messenger hawk, but I think we need to get a forehead protector for Juubi.” He sighed. “Did he come back for you, or for the captain?” Danzo had disappeared the moment he entered Konoha – per Tsume’s nose, he was camped outside the Hokage’s office, and wasn’t likely to move until the Hokage eventually returned from the Capital.

“He came,” Aunt Bashira said, moving to Juubi’s head, “for Tsume. My, you are a magnificent creature aren’t you?” Her voice purred with delight as Juubi lifted his head to acknowledge Aunt Bashira. She lovingly rubbed Juubi’s muzzle.

Tsume combed her left fingers through Juubi’s shiny black mane, and tried to work the knots loose. Juubi shook his braided tail placidly. “I can share with Danzo if Juubi wants.” Tsume had figured out some of Juubi’s body language in the time she spent with him, and could read enough to know that Juubi was pleased and satisfied to be back with Tsume. She had also known, by his scent, that Juubi had kinda-maybe-sorta liked Danzo, even though Danzo most certainly-absolutely-really hated Juubi. Of all the creatures Tsume was familiar with, Juubi reminded her more of a cat than a dog – he was headstrong, proud, and likely only did what his rider wanted because it coincided with what _he_ wanted.

“Medic,” gasped the chuunin with the shattered ribcage. Natsumi reluctantly turned to him, her hands glowing green with her rarely-used healing techniques.

However, Juubi was still Juubi, no matter how Danzo thought that the horse was a cow. Tsume was raised on the Tale of the First Mother, and adored the idea of having her very own ten-tailed beast.

“And just _where_ are you going to put him?” Sakumo asked.

Tsume thought a moment as she rocked upright in the saddle. Gosh, the world seemed really far away from Juubi’s back. She felt oddly superior for being so much taller than Sakumo and Aunt Natsumi. “We can keep him in the kennels.”

Aunt Natsumi snorted. “Yeah, that would go over well with the pack.”

Well, Juubi hadn’t disliked Grandmother’s ninken. Tsume didn’t see why it would be a bother. Aunt Bashira’s original guardians were horses and would probably take good care of Juubi if Tsume was busy. It would work out perfectly.

“Oyubi is allergic to horses – her eyes get all watery, and then she sneezes everywhere. Hiji doesn’t like horses, and Megumi still hasn’t forgiven the Fire Daimyo’s horse for nearly biting off her fingers, even if she doesn’t have that hand anymore anyway. No, Tsume-chan, the pack isn’t going to like this at all.” Oh, _that_ pack. “Just because you’re now the alpha head doesn’t mean you’re free to make any and all decisions. You have to consider the repercussions of your choices, and how they will affect everyone in the clan.”

Tsume stroked Juubi’s shoulder. He was as much a part of her pack as Cousin Megumi’s potted pet cactus – more so, in fact. Cousin Megumi’s cactus had a tendency to bite Tsume whenever she tried petting it; at least Juubi generally kept his teeth to himself. At least for people he liked. “Could Danzo keep him for me?” she asked plaintively. Juubi nuzzled Aunt Bashira’s white hair.

Sakumo choked, coughed, and then laughed despite himself. “I-I’m just trying to imagine the look on the captain’s face when he walks into his house and finds a warhorse standing in the kitchen.”

Tsume had no difficulty imagining the look on Danzo’s face, and giggled. “I don’t think Juubi would like Danzo’s kitchen.” Before she could ask another question, a genin from the bird post stepped through the gates. He carefully skirted the other chuunin that Aunt Natsumi was busy healing, and handed Sakumo a piece of paper. Kakashi peered at it curiously as Sakumo unfolded the paper.

“It says, ‘the warhorse is yours, best of luck to Danzo.’ Also, I don’t think that Juubi would like Danzo’s living room any more than he would the kitchen.”

“Does Danzo have a yard or a garden?”

Sakumo stroked his chin in thought, as Aunt Natsumi told the chuunin to stop fussing, four broken ribs weren’t _that_ bad, especially when they hadn’t pierced the man’s lung. “Well, he does,” Sakumo began reluctantly, “and I suspect that it really needs to be mowed, but it’s awfully small, and Juubi has very long legs, and needs a place to run.”

Tsume thought a moment, her legs swinging free, and then nodded her head as she reached a decision. “You’re right. And so’s Aunt Natsumi.”

“Soooooo…” Sakumo rubbed his chin as he studied Aunt Bashira, whose eyes were heavy-lidded as she continued to inspect Juubi. “I’m sensing that you know there’s something more to Juubi than the rest of us have figured.”

Aunt Bashira’s smile was as pointy as Aunt Natsumi’s, as she flashed her teeth in a fearsome grin. “He’s half horse, half summon. I’ve never seen the like before, and I am _delighted._ ”

Oh. Huh. Tsume knew that Aunt Bashira’s favored spirit guardians and summon were horses, but she hadn’t made the connection between that and Juubi until now. Perfect! She bet that Aunt Bashira would give her loads of information on the Proper Care and Feeding of Questionably Demonic Horses. “I know where we can keep Juubi!” She dug her heels into Juubi’s side and clicked her tongue the way that she had seen some of the other samurai. Kuromaru barked and left his post beside Kakashi. He ran circles around Juubi as Tsume urged Juubi through the open gates and towards her sire’s forest.

After all, Shikake has said that Tsume was as much Nara as she was Inuzuka, and Juubi looked more like a deer than he did a dog. “I bet that Juubi would love to frolic with the deer!”

And for some reason, that made Sakumo nearly double-over in laughter. Well, she liked the sound and smell of Sakumo’s cheer much more than she did his grief and regret. Tsume felt, as she rode Danzo’s demon-of-a-horse through Konoha, that things were going to be all right. 

oOoOoOo

Danzo stood rigid and stared at a spot over Hiruzen’s head as Hiruzen wordlessly studied Orochimaru’s written report. Hiruzen’s left index finger periodically tapped the desk’s surface, which was cluttered with a somewhat battered tea set, other stacks of paperwork, and his Hokage’s hat. The report wasn’t that long, but the time the Hokage spent studying the report was abnormally lengthy. He wondered if Hiruzen had fallen asleep with his eyes open.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Hiruzen sighed and leaned back in his chair. He still wore his battle uniform, having gone straight to his office upon his arrival in Konoha, and had found Danzo literally camped outside the locked office with the report. Danzo had sponge-bathed in the public bathroom and ordered takeout in the week he waited for Hiruzen’s return, and menaced any staff that attempted to remove him from the premises.

Hiruzen folded his fingers together into a steeple and studied Danzo for another long, silent moment. “It’s a very damning report, Danzo,” Hiruzen said. It seemed highly inappropriate that the day outside should be bright and sunny, that shrieks of laughter could be heard faintly from the Academy’s training fields just below the Hokage’s open window. The Fuuinjutsu privacy seals on the windowsill allowed sound to enter through the window, but not to escape from the room.

Danzo still burned with humiliated resentment from having to personally hand-deliver Orochimaru’s very damning report to the Hokage. And since it had been chakra-sealed, Danzo didn’t dare open it up and read the contents before handing it over. “I’m sure it is, just as I’m sure that Orochimaru wrote nothing but the truth.” Knowing Orochimaru, Danzo just doubted it was the _entirety_ of the truth.

“Interference in a Black Ops that you’ve only been read into peripherally, especially interference of _this_ level and extent, is intolerable. The time, the effort, the long-reaching effect you have just so utterly and completely destroyed. A process that was years in planning, undone in mere moments. I really needn’t tell you this – you’ve run enough Black Ops to understand the gravity of your interference.”

Danzo gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir. Absolutely reprehensible.”

“I’ve given you a lot of leeway over the years, my friend. Leeway that hasn’t been extended to others. Your movements and leadership in ANBU is unprecedented given the loose and informal hierarchy, but I’ve always allowed it without worry – well, _too_ much worry – despite our philosophical differences. You will use any and all means to achieve your ends and I worry about said means. However, I’ve always trusted that your ends are ultimately the same as my ends, that Konoha’s survival and the Will of Fire guide our purposes.” Hiruzen’s eyes glinted as he shook his head in disapproval. “But to interfere with a Black Ops that isn’t even run within the parameters of ANBU, to deliberately meddle outside your shinobi division and the structure of your command without the full scope of the operation – that is _beyond the pale_ , even for you, Shimura Danzo.”

Danzo remained unmoving from his rigid stance, gaze still trained upon the spot above Hiruzen’s head. “I hold myself completely accountable, especially in overstepping my bounds.” In the lower end of his vision, he saw Hiruzen slump tiredly and press a hand over his eyes.

“Certainly, this is something that must be dealt with, and with all the severity such a breach of protocol demands. The _least_ I should do is strip you from ANBU and permanently break you down in rank to special-jounin, or better yet, chuunin, as a lesson that you cannot overstep your bounds, especially _you_ of all people. You who train the new recruits and constantly enforce that the _mission must come first,_ and to _not question the orders from your superiors._ ”

Danzo felt like his teeth were going to shatter in his jaw. “I deserve nothing less.” It would be deeply humiliating, but he would survive, just as he survived worse. Just as Tsume had survived worse. (“ _He w-wasn’t supposed to **see**!_”) _Twelve years old_ , his mind whispered in repeated echoes. _TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD._

“That’s just the problem now, isn’t it?” Hiruzen brushed the report off his desk and indicated the chair that was positioned on the other side. “Please, Danzo, sit. As much as I enjoy watching you squirm, I can’t very well reprimand you if you’re going to pass out on me.”

“I’d prefer standing, sir.” Danzo resented that Hiruzen was behaving like an old friend and comrade, instead of his commanding officer and leader of the Hidden Village. “And I’m not going to pass out.” And he wasn’t _squirming._ How could he, when he wasn’t moving at all?

“Then I declare that as part of your punishment, you must sit.” He pointed firmly at the chair. “Now.”

Danzo moved slowly, but he obeyed. He continued to resolutely stare at a spot above Hiruzen’s head instead of meeting his friend’s eyes, even after he was seated.

“I find myself in a difficult position. I must trust the word of my student – an orphan whom I helped raise, an apprentice that I have trained for many years – whom I truly believed was competent to handle this. I must also trust my long-developed instincts that say the friend, whom I’ve trained and ran missions with and worked side by side for decades, has a very valid reason for pulling this unprecedented stunt. My student has had a chance to say – or write, rather – his piece, and now I extend the same to my friend.”

Danzo did his best to ignore the chill that zipped up and down his spine. “You wouldn’t offer this courtesy if I were anyone else.” He remembered Jiraiya’s statement on how Danzo was the only person in the entire village to receive such leeway from the Hokage. The memory of such twisted his gut with almost as much guilt as the memory of Tsume’s blood.

“But that’s just it, Danzo. If you _were_ anyone else, I doubt there would’ve been interference in the first place. Besides, Jiraiya sent me a toad with a very short message that I should hear you out, so I know something is going on, and Kagami gave me that look of his when I entered the building – you know which look.”

Danzo could guess at the look. No doubt Kagami had given Hiruzen the _I’ll pin Danzo down if you’ll try talking some sense into him_ look. Uchiha Kagami had an entire language of looks in his arsenal, skillfully honed over a number of years as he operated in a position that was greatly disliked since its conception under the First Hokage. His face was usually so placid and benign – the better at which to surprise people into cooperating with his investigations – but he had developed the language in their youth out of self-defense because Natsumi had such excellent hearing.

Danzo had been on the receiving end of, _I know you did something stupid again, but you’re probably blowing it way out of proportion like you always do, Danzo,_ multiple times at the wagon train. The look had been enough; Danzo had been careful not to have any words alone with Kagami, lest the dark rage simmering beneath his breast explode into a firestorm.

The silence dragged on; Danzo resolutely refused to volunteer anything.

The Hokage sighed. “Oh for crying out loud… Now,” Hiruzen leaned forward, his arms flat on the table, “did you knowingly and maliciously interfere with an active _and_ currently successful Black Ops that was in no danger of being discovered by the enemy?”

“Yes.”

“Do you agree that you _knew_ Inuzuka Tsume and her life was in no more danger at the time you met her than at the start of her assigned mission?”

Danzo knotted his hands together and mulled over his answer. Due to the deliberate placement of the seal, he couldn’t say that she was in any _more_ danger of being raped when he yanked her out of the mission than when she was assigned. Hell, being yanked from the Black Ops sure didn’t save her in the ravine. “When worded like _that_ , yes.”

Hiruzen made an impatient noise and spread his hands in question. “But clearly there was something you saw that jeopardized the mission, something that required the decision to immediately abort.”

The thick wall Danzo had built to contain his emotions in the last month was beginning to crumble in the face of his friend’s concern. The emotions were clawing at him, begging him to lose control. Hiruzen and Sakumo were _always_ somehow managing to tear down the walls. Kagami, at least, respected Danzo enough to let Danzo wallow freely in his own misery. _Damn Hiruzen. Always unable to mind your own business._ Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose as his mind went to the heart of the matter. “Inuzuka Tsume is twelve years old.”

“Well, _yes._ That _was_ the point, believe it or not. Her youth was the reason for being assigned to this mission – young, innocent, hardly threatening, absolutely incapable of seduction like the last eight Konoha kunoichi we’ve sent, so she wouldn’t garner the suspicion or attention that the others did. With such a remarkable nose, her youth wasn’t going to be a factor in her success or not. She didn’t require the use of chakra, or had a bloodline that could be detected. All she had was what we needed: a talented, sensitive nose, in a person who wouldn’t be poking it close to where it killed the other kunoichi.”

Danzo couldn’t stop the bark of disbelieving laughter that tore from his lips. “This Black Ops was nothing more than a fucking _farce_.” Restless now but still feeling brittle and rigid inside, Danzo fidgeted in his chair, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I don’t even know where to begin if you were so willing to allow this to happen to a twelve year old! You, of all people!” Hiruzen was supposed to be the better man – he had always been more noble, more honorable than Danzo, always beyond his reach. What did it mean if Danzo, who had willingly brutalized an innocent child, was better than Hiruzen? It meant that almost forty years of understanding his best friend were wasted…

“Tsume was in the best place she could be to help Konoha, and by your own admission she wasn’t in any undue danger. Something else bothers you.” Danzo tore away his gaze when he saw Hiruzen’s gentle concern. “Spit it out, then. I see you’re only trying to find a nice way of breaking the news to me, but such a kindness is unbecoming on you.” Danzo snatched his hand back as Hiruzen covered it with one of his own. He wanted to claw the lingering touch off his skin.

Danzo jumped to his feet and whirled around, knocking the chair over. “Did you _deliberately_ send Tsume there, knowing that—?” He slammed a fist into the wall and forced himself to take a deep breath.

Losing his temper with the Hokage was unprecedented for him. Unless they had to share blankets, because everyone but Biwako eventually lost their tempers with Hiruzen’s persistent blanket theft. Even Kagami, ever patient and ever nonchalant, had contemplated murder when they were thirteen years old. ( _“If we smother him with the blanket, we can always tell Tobirama-sensei that it was the natural progression of stealing too much material. We could totally get away with it, Danzo. And why are we always losing the rock paper scissors? Why can’t he share bedrolls with his **original** teammates?”)_

Danzo’s laugh was brief and bitter. “Of _course_ you did. But how would you know to do otherwise, when her own clan was ignorant?” He turned and faced Hiruzen, who hadn’t moved from his chair. “A month ago, for breakfast, you drank oolong tea with some cream and two cubes of sugar, and you ate a still-green banana with some sugar sprinkled on it. _Ink-stained_ sugar, Tsume said, which meant that you had been signing papers before you even got around to putting the sugar on the banana in the first place. From a distance of _eight hundred kilometers_ , as her chakra maxed her olfactory sensitivity to one hundred percent, Inuzuka Tsume told me _exactly_ what you were eating and drinking while in the company of Uchiha Fugaku, Uchiha Chimon, and Kagami. She _also_ told me what each Uchiha had for breakfast.”

Hiruzen’s mouth was agape in surprise as he leaned back in his chair. “Truly. A month ago?” He concentrated for a moment. “That’s eerie, as she was correct with what I ate and drank. I spoke to those three because it was the morning that the Fire Daimyo called me to the Capital. I knew she was one of the best in the clan, but – eight hundred kilometers, are you _sure_ of that?” A look of terror crossed his face. “By the Sage of Six Paths, just how strong _is_ her sense of smell?”

Danzo flashed his teeth in a vicious smile. “Remarkable, indeed, but I can’t tell you just how good she is, because _I don’t know_. I estimate her sensitivity is _at least_ two thousand times greater than a ninken’s. She was able to detect and track our kidnapped jinchuuriki from _five countries_ away – neither of us knew how or why Uzumaki Kushina wound up in the company of Kumo nin, and I crossed those countries with Tsume on tow, with no other intel but what her nose gave us, because no one else seemed close to rescuing her.”

Danzo raked a hand through his hair. He wanted to choke Hiruzen. “I obtained the same level of Intel that Tsume got in that brothel in Earth _just_ by planting her on a hill outside an ANBU relief station in Whirlpool, and making her sniff at one hundred percent olfaction! And that’s the saddest part of all this, Hiruzen.” He struggled to find suitable words that sounded as condemning as the situation was. “If anyone in the Inuzuka clan had taken even a moment to measure Tsume’s true strength and abilities, the mission would’ve been better tailored to suit her.”

“Poor mission parameters when there was no danger of discovery was not exactly the acceptable reason I was looking for, Danzo, but given her nose…” Hiruzen was pale. “I never imagined such a thing _could_ be done. I can see why you removed her – she could successfully gather Intel with her nose from a safe distance, instead of in the midst of danger. Eight _hundred_ kilometers… By all the gods, such a talent _cannot_ be allowed to fall into the hands of our enemies, so you made an appropriate judgment call. And you’re right – it was a grave error to send her, not knowing the extent of her olfaction.”

Huh. Well, that was easy.

Danzo could end the conversation there. With a simple nod of the head, a murmur of assent, the matter would be safely concluded with Danzo’s reputation safely intact, unless Jiraiya followed up with his own report – Danzo doubted such, however, since Jiraiya hadn’t apparently supplied the Hokage specific information to ask Danzo. Orochimaru would never dare to discuss a closed Black Ops with Hiruzen, and that would be that.

Hiruzen would never know the level of corruption to which Danzo had fallen, the filth that stained his soul. The secrets could remain hidden in the shadows, never brought to light.

And the coin that bought Danzo’s intact respect from his friend was a brutalized twelve year old girl who never deserved to be placed in a brothel. Danzo couldn’t predict where Tsume’s simple-albeit-unconventional thoughts would take her in the years to come, or how the lingering trauma would continue to shape her. He still didn’t know how she could absorb the rape in the ravine, and yet only be concerned with Sakumo’s witness.

How bad had life truly been in the brothel that Tsume was able to shrug off the ravine like it was nothing more than as if she twisted her ankle in a training exercise?

His reputation wasn’t worth that price – not when Tsume had already paid an unnecessary wage. He owed her too much, and Danzo couldn’t tolerate personal debts of any sort. “Hiruzen, she could have easily gathered all the Intel we needed on our enemy forces from _Grass_.” 

If Danzo remained silent, the Hokage would never truly know or appreciate the level of torture his kunoichi had to endure. It wasn’t fair.

Hiruzen sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’m aware of that _now_. But as you said, not even her clan knew. I’d wager that they would never have considered such a thing _possible_. We’ve tried multiple Inuzuka trackers in the region before, and they didn’t even catch a whiff of an army within a hundred kilometers, much less what their Hokage was eating or drinking from _eight hundred_ kilometers away.” He twitched, still trying to comprehend what it must be like to smell dinner cooking in the next room, except from across the other side of the world.

“Do you know what it _cost_ Tsume to obtain that Intel, where you had assigned her?”

Hiruzen went very still, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I’m aware of the danger she was in, being alone and without backup, but we had made arrangements for her to enjoy the dogs kept at Madame Haori’s Palace of Pleasure. It placed her directly in the midst of the shinobi where she could obtain the information without asking questions.” He sighed again. “It was the best I could do for her, although I’m sure that the kennel dogs were a poor substitute for Kuromaru.”

Danzo felt a wry smile twist his mouth – somehow, Tsume still blundered where she was supposed to. “You’d be pleased to know that she did make friends with the dogs – even the strays from the alley. She told them not to track us when we left, and they obeyed.”

“You’re still not telling me something.”

Danzo felt old and tired as he retreated further into the shadows. That was where he belonged – the Hokage belonged in the sunlight, where he always remained beyond Danzo’s reach – far, far beyond. 

Resentment once more butted against shame – why should _Hiruzen’s_ innocence be protected when _Tsume’s_ had been sold?

But was Hiruzen even innocent when he had directed Orochimaru in the first place to sell Tsume into prostitution in the first place? Orochimaru would’ve known that Tsume wasn’t an ideal prostitute, but Danzo couldn’t guess whether the siren seal was Orochimaru’s idea or Hiruzen’s. Danzo opened his mouth to speak, but remained silent because he still couldn’t shape the appropriate words.

“Well.” Hiruzen settled back in his chair and reached for the other stack of paperwork in clear dismissal. “If you’re not going to say anything, I’m not going to pry it from you.”

With a jolt of adrenaline, Danzo realized his hesitancy wasn’t because he wanted to protect Hiruzen, or even obtain justice for Tsume.

He wanted Hiruzen to _bleed_. He wanted his friend to hurt like Danzo had, when his world had shattered at the sight of stark blood stains smearing his body. (TWELVE YEARS OLD _TWELVE **FUCKING** YEARS OLD_.) He wanted Hiruzen’s soul to shrivel to ash the same way his had when he looked at that fragile, naked girl, bleeding and hurting as she curled up and cried beneath Sakumo’s shirt at the bottom of a dark ravine. Danzo wanted the Will of Fire to _burn_ in filth and decay. He wanted Hiruzen ravaged with the same guilt and shame that had clung to Danzo for the last thousand kilometers, that continued to claw his insides even now.

“You realize she cannot report or explain anything to anyone, and has nothing to show for what she did,” Danzo said, amazed that his voice was steady despite the rage that crawled through his veins. “I did tell her that was the nature of the beast when it comes to Black Ops, but it’s still not right.”

Hiruzen sighed and cradled his chin against the palm of his hand. He looked old and tired. “You know there’s nothing to be done about that, Danzo.”

“But think about the cost of that to a twelve year old genin, Hiruzen. Just for even a moment. Think of _us_ when we were at that age.” What other dark, filthy things had Hiruzen done to Konoha’s shinobi without Danzo realizing it?

“I’d rather not think of us at that age, because then I’d have to think about Tobirama and Natsumi.” Hiruzen’s expression was suspicious. “It’s _very_ unlike you to request glory or recognition for anyone who’s just fulfilling their duty.”

Danzo restlessly paced in the shadows. “She gave what was asked of her, without resentment, without fear, and without hate, even when that which was freely offered was brutally torn from her.”

“Ah.” The Hokage dropped his hand away. “I see now where this is going.”

“No, you don’t. _Think_ for a moment, Hiruzen. A _twelve_ year old genin’s very first mission is an S Rank Black Ops – cut-your-throat classified, beyond her skills level. She spends four months in the field, and receives nothing in return – no recognition, no promotions or recommendations in her file, nothing worthwhile. These are the expectations we have for our experienced adult shinobi, expectations that they are aware of when they accept the mission – except _they_ would get paid S rank, and she won’t because that much money would garner too many questions. It’s not the standard we have ever held for a baby-faced adolescent who hadn’t even received her forehead protector yet.” 

“Do you doubt my ingenuity when it comes to paying someone under the table?” Hiruzen tapped his fingers against the surface of his desk. “I can see this matter has been bothering you for a great while. And it bothers me that it’s bothering you, because this is very uncharacteristic of Shimura Danzo.”

Danzo stopped, and then folded his arms before himself. “So you think you know me that well?” He wasn’t arguing on behalf of Tsume; he was building a tower from which he’d shove off Hiruzen.

Hiruzen gave Danzo an exasperated look as he pulled his pipe out of a desk drawer and stuffed it with fresh tobacco. “We have been friends, companions, comrades-in-arms for nigh forty years, Danzo, before either of us even became ninjas. I feel closer to you and Kagami than my original teammates, because you’ve both remained trustworthy, steadfast bulwarks after I became the Hokage, instead of morphing into simpering sycophants. You two were even nice enough to share your bedrolls when we were young and cold. I think the only soul more intimate – or honest – with me would be my wife’s. None of you three ever lacked the compunction to tell me when I’m wrong or to point out my flaws and failings, and you do so to build me up, instead of tearing me down. Well, Kagami and Biwako’s efforts are kinder – you’re just painfully blunt, and frankly a little insulting, too. So, yes, I do think I know you that well.”

Danzo found himself slinking backwards into the shadows again. His petty bitterness and manipulation never before sounded so good, so noble. Hiruzen truly was a naïve idiot. “But you never _truly_ know a person, do you, Hiruzen?” _How the hell do you manage to get that image of me? And what else have you failed to **see**? _ “Because either you knew what was happening and approved, or was ignorant of such a flaw.” His mind whirled to wonder what Orochimaru may have done behind Hiruzen’s back. “I thought it likeliest that you were ignorant – but I find myself wondering, what if you actually _did_ know? What then becomes of our Will of Fire, for that level of corruption to exist?”

Hiruzen slowly set his pipe down. “I beg your pardon?”

“I knew Tsume’s sense of smell was extraordinary – but I didn’t know until _after_ I had pulled her out of the Ops. My reasons for pulling her were purely selfish and emotional.” He hadn’t been noble to rescue Tsume; he had done it to appease his own guilt, as _unsuccessful_ as that had been.

“ _You_ might think it was unlike you to react in such a way, but _I_ would find it unsurprising, Danzo.” Hiruzen was tapping the desk again with his fingers. Each tap scraped against Danzo’s temper. He felt like his nerves had been stripped raw and exposed to acid. “Not surprising indeed, because whether you own up to it or not, you’ve always been a passionate man. Still waters run deep – and turbulently so, in your case. But it merely proves my suspicions that Tsume was in some level of danger that you’re reluctant to explain. The situation had to be horrendous if _you_ lost control enough to become so emotionally entangled that you would knowingly abort a Black Ops you had no right to interfere with – and there’s only a few assorted human atrocities that spring immediately to mind when you admitted she wasn’t in any… _undue_ danger.” Hiruzen went very still, and then turned his eyes to the window. “I’ve always been aware that rape would be a possibility during this mission, given where she would be stationed.”

A… possibility?

A _fucking **possibility**?_

That was the worst understatement that Danzo had ever heard in his entire life. Rage simmered and boiled, just as it had when Kagami told Danzo that he had been aware of Tsume’s role in the Black Ops.

The tension in Danzo’s shoulders felt like wings about to burst through his skin. He wanted to run, wanted to hide in the shadows, wanted to keep Hiruzen in the sun, even though that meant Hiruzen was always out of his reach. He _wanted_ to protect and shelter his friend – Danzo’s petty and ruthless ugliness only highlighted the brilliant goodness in Hiruzen.

He desperately wanted to drag Hiruzen down to his level, neck-deep in filth, and couldn’t help but wonder if Hiruzen wasn’t already there, carefully maintaining a facade of innocence in front of everyone. One didn’t get to become the God of Shinobi with lily-white hands, after all. “I never ask anyone to do more than what I’m willing to give.”

“Yes. And I’ve always respected you for that.” Hiruzen remained patient and kind with him – Hiruzen was always the better man. Blind, foolish, hopeful, and yet still a better man.

Danzo suddenly realized how deeply he'd always resented such, how he had dug himself into such a hole of filth and that Hiruzen – a man who claimed to be his friend – had allowed Danzo to do so in the first place. What kind of friend supported that? “What is Konoha,” Danzo began in a soft voice as the resentment and confusion clogged his throat, “if not a place where a trio of Academy girls can decorate your tower with a thousand sloppy paper cranes held in place with chewing gum?”

Hiruzen smiled. “A good place. I imagine that Ame would’ve strung the girls up by their ankles, though my guards were sorely tempted to, and hardly consolable. Do you have any idea how hard it is to remove gum once it’s dried to the surface in the sun?”

Another shriek of laughter drifted through the window. “What is Konoha, if not a place where a ten year old girl can successfully sneak into the hospital to introduce the baby in her arms to his father?”

Hiruzen was silent, his eyes flickering and finger tapping.

Danzo straightened. “And _what_ is Konoha if it willingly brutalizes its twelve year old genin?”

The tapping stilled. Hiruzen’s eyes fluttered shut as a spasm of pain crossed his face. “I knew it.”

“No, you fucking did _not_ know it. You still don’t!” Danzo ducked his head. Tension coiled his body like a trap ready to snap with the slightest pressure. He strode across the room, slammed his hands flat against Hiruzen’s desk, and leaned forward. He pushed his face against Hiruzen’s. “So just what the hell is Konoha if it willfully sells its adolescent genin to the fucking enemy _as a child prostitute_?” 

Hiruzen recoiled in horror. “ _No_.” He then rose to his feet, trembling. Danzo was gratified to feel the slow churn of Hiruzen’s killing intent, as if awakening from a deep winter slumber. He had built the tower with his words, and now he shoved Hiruzen over the edge.

“Yes! I ask you again, Hiruzen – do you _know_ what it cost Tsume? Not her life, no, but we both know that there are fates worse than death. Poor mission parameters is how Tsume learned the hard way that Iwa nin fuck as harshly as they fight – and she _relearned_ it night after night, for _months_ , such a darling little _whore_ for every brutal man!”

“No!” Hiruzen tore at his hair. “That was _not_ what she was supposed to do there. She was supposed to be apprenticed to the _kennel keeper_!” Hiruzen whirled away from Danzo to face his window, overlooking the Academy’s training grounds where the children played ninja in a safe, observed environment.

Ah, so Orochimaru had _interfered_. Danzo wondered what it would take to assassinate Hiruzen’s apprentice.

Danzo continued relentlessly, his words like barbed weapons that he hurled at Hiruzen, the man who had _made_ Orochimaru. _Bleed, you son of a bitch._ “She didn’t even _have_ to be in the same fucking country, Hiruzen! She didn’t have to suffer through sheets drenched in blood! She didn’t have to be brutalized for three solid months. They _forced_ an abortion on her – a twelve year old Inuzuka girl who never should’ve gotten pregnant in the first place! She thought this was going to be the rest of her _life_ , that this was what Konoha _wanted_ of her, and all she could do was cling to the hope that her two year old nephew wouldn’t forget her. It shouldn’t have even mattered if she couldn’t smell the difference between a dead skunk or a potted rose. She is twelve fucking years old, and _Orochimaru had her own grandmother sell her to the brothel!”_

Hiruzen’s shoulders flinched as if he had been struck. His voice was a guttural whisper. “Stop it, Danzo.”

“At least _you_ knew that Inuzuka Tsume was the operative. Orochimaru didn’t even give me _that_ information when he assigned me to make contact with the spy and obtain her report. But I’m _worse_ than Iwa, Hiruzen…” Danzo’s voice broke as he choked on his words. He was ashamed of what he did, but the guilt would drive him insane if he couldn’t fully admit his part. He didn’t want that level of deception between him and Hiruzen, especially when Hiruzen was already so fucking delusional about Danzo’s true nature. “For all their brutality, Iwa didn’t send her in there alone, and the Iwa shinobi were strangers… I wasn’t. I _knew_ better. The sheets _I_ stained cost a heavier price than theirs.”

Hiruzen slowly turned from the window. His killing intent was fully awake now, and growing in pressure. He stood straight and tall in the sunshine that came through the window, and his gaze seared Danzo. “ _You_ …”

“I did.” A heartbeat passed. Unable to continue tearing strips from Hiruzen, Danzo turned the barbs upon himself. He threw himself off the tower. “May all the Powers That Be have mercy on whatever remains of my soul, Hiruzen. I _did_. There are very few moments in life I regret as much as that, and no punishment you can ever devise will ever cleanse me of such sins.”

Hiruzen’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I see.” His gaze deliberately turned to Orochimaru’s report, half-curled on his desk. After a heartbeat, he said, “And so you too speak in half-truths.”

Danzo’s hands curled into fists, and he straightened upward to his full height, which didn’t quite match Hiruzen’s. “I speak _all_ truth.”

Hiruzen tilted his chin down and glowered. His voice was a whisper. “Oh? You only give me bits and pieces of this truth. _You_ are _deliberately_ goading me, you _asshole_.” Hiruzen stalked forward, his movements lithe and deadly, like a panther approaching its kill. His white scarf fluttered behind him. “You are always punishing yourself for your mistakes and weaknesses, hoping to be purged free of such blights.” Hiruzen stopped when he was nose to nose with Danzo. “And when you cannot flog yourself as thoroughly as you feel you deserve, you hand the lash to me.”

“Wait – what?”

Hiruzen crossed his office and yanked the door open. “Bring me Inuzuka Tsume immediately and without delay,” he told the ANBU stationed out his door, and then he slammed the door shut before the ANBU could give confirmation. “You heard me,” he told Danzo darkly as he walked back to his desk. He righted the chair that Danzo had knocked over before sitting in his own. He settled back with his elbows propped on the desk top, hands folded in front of his face. “I can see it in your eyes and in your body language. You’re not going to tell me everything that will save your career and ambitions, but you will gladly heap the wood at the foot of the stake you’re tied to and drag Orochimaru down with you at the same time. You may not even be cognizant of the fact, but I’m _tired_ of being the person you arrange to toss that damn match onto the wood, time and time again.”

“That’s not—”

Hiruzen held up a hand. “Say no more. It would appear that the only one adult enough to tell me the full truth is a twelve year old girl. For crying out loud…”

A few moments later, ANBU – Raccoon – was at Hiruzen’s window. Tsume dangled from Raccoon’s grasp by the back of her shirt, her legs kicking uselessly and her bowl of ramen cradled in the crook of her left arm, her chopsticks clenched tightly between her gritted teeth. “Leggo! Wazza big idea?”

Raccoon deposited Tsume and ramen in front of the Hokage before dodging Tsume’s attempt to kick him.

“That was quick,” Hiruzen said, dismissing Raccoon. “I thank you for your speed.” Raccoon slunk through the window without any further orders. Tsume looked from her ramen to the Hokage to Danzo and then back to her ramen. Hiruzen gave her a smile that was warm and inviting. “Please, Tsume-chan, have a seat. I apologize for catching you at lunch, but alas – that is how the timing worked out, I’m afraid.”

Tsume spat the chopsticks onto the table. “It’s okay. I was just having ramen with Kushina and Kokoro and Kakashi. I…” Tsume looked embarrassed to still be holding onto the bowl in front of the Hokage. She nudged it onto his desk. “I haven’t had any since I left Konoha.”

Hiruzen’s smile clashed with his killing intent, but Tsume had never been deterred by killing intent before. “Please, don’t hesitate to eat. Growing girls do need as much nutrition as possible to get taller. I just want you to tell me about your mission. It’s a long story, I’m sure, and there’s no point to wasting good ramen and letting it go cold.”

“Oh.” Tsume gave Danzo a strange look, who decided that the wall required assistance in staying upright.

“Have a seat, child. Eat. Talk.”

“Well, okay.” Tsume made herself comfortable, kneeling in the chair with her ramen on the Hokage’s desk. Some of the broth slopped over the edge as she jostled the bowl one-handed, but Hiruzen simply shuffled the papers away and poured Tsume a cup of tea. She immediately brightened. “Thanks!” Hiruzen dabbed up the broth with some napkins.

“So, Danzo here was telling me about your Black Ops mission to Earth. As it is your mission, you also need to give me your report. So I’ll just have you start at the very beginning, and tell me everything.” Hiruzen’s smile remained unchanged as he folded his arms on top of the desk and leaned forward, head cocked to the side.

Tsume turned wide eyes upon Danzo. “Everything?” Her voice cracked in its high-pitched squeak. Her cheeks turned red.

Danzo nodded his head. “ _Everything_.”

“Oh. I don’t think I could remember everything-everything . Well, Hokage-sama, um, when you say at the beginning, do you mean when I saw Orochimaru, or when Grandmother first got me? And where’s the end of my story supposed to be?” The nervous look she gave Danzo told him all – she didn’t want to tell the Hokage of what Sakumo had seen in the ravine.

Danzo answered the question before Hiruzen could speak. “Start with your great-grandmother, and the unmarked grave she promised to bury you in.” Danzo ignored the quick narrow-eyed glare Hiruzen shot him. Feeling like he was still signing his own death warrant, Danzo grabbed a spare chair from the corner of the room and set it beside Tsume. He straddled it from behind and crossed his arms over the back. He wanted a solid barrier between him and Hiruzen, and the desk didn’t feel like it was enough. “Realize, Hokage-sama,” Danzo told Hiruzen with a frown at the radiating smugness, “I’m only speaking up during Tsume’s report to help jog her memory.”

“Oh, thank you!” Tsume’s smile lit up her face; the sloppily-drawn crimson triangles on her face wrinkled. She had been practicing with the paints that Aunt Natsumi gave her. “I was kinda worried for a moment that I’d forget to tell Hokage-sama something really, really important. Anyway.” She shoveled a few bites of ramen down, chewed quickly, and then nearly choked upon swallowing. “Mmm. Yeah. Well, I was supposed to graduate from the Academy the next day when Grandmother came and told me that I had a mission.” Tsume slurped another mouthful of noodles, quickly licked at some of the broth that spilled on the desk, and talked with her mouth full. “She said that, uh, I didn’t have a choice, I was doing the mission. Because if I didn’t go, then she’d bury me in an unmarked grave instead of, you know, carting me all the way back to Konoha. She said she was going to be rid of me, one way or another.”

“That’s not an encouraging thing to hear when presented with your first mission,” Hiruzen told Tsume sympathetically.

Tsume was still for a moment as she stared down at her ramen, as if she was ramen-reading the same way some fortune-tellers read tea leaves. “No, sir,” she agreed quietly. Danzo wondered if she was remembering the last confrontation she had with Shinzou – Nara Shikake had told Danzo everything the night before the wagon train left. Then Tsume aggressively slurped up some more noodles.

“So what happened?”

“Well, I had to accept the mission then, because I figured I’d survive it better than an unmarked grave. I wrote my friends some letters, and gave Kuromaru to Kakashi – except I took him back now that I’m home again, see – and then Grandmother dragged me off to the camp in Grass to see Orochimaru. We ran for a long time without much rest to get there. Anyway, Orochimaru told me that I didn’t have to accept the mission if I didn’t want to and he wanted me to know what I was getting into, but I said I wasn’t scared, so he said okay, and told me that it was going to be brutal and lonely and I’ll wish I would’ve died, and I said it was still okay, because it will be for Konoha. Or something like that.” Tsume squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated a moment, trying to remember. “He said that, uh, there wouldn’t be any backup and no one to help me, and he almost didn’t want to send me on the mission. He said he wanted me to understand, and offered it, instead of commanding that I take the mission.” She took another bite.

“And all of this still sounded better than a grave?” Hiruzen asked in polite disbelief as he lit his pipe.

Tsume swallowed and wrinkled her nose at the smoke. “Well, _Orochimaru_ sounded better than _Grandmother_. Of course, I also didn’t know what he meant when he said I was going to be sold into sex slavery. I mean, I did, because I knew about sex, but I didn’t, because I’ve never had sex before, and no one ever mentioned it would _hurt,_ or that I’d have to do it with so many men every day, or that it’d make me bleed like a stuck pig the first few times or any time the men got really, really rough.”

“He _told_ you about the slavery… Ah.” Hiruzen’s eyes flickered briefly to Danzo, pipe smoke dancing in a haze, and his fingers tightened perceptibly around the pipe.

“Yup. He said Grandmother was going to sell me to the brothel, and that I would be brutalized by Iwa shinobi. So I knew what I was going into, even if I didn’t know it. I just… it’s hard to describe what it’s like to know but not _really_ know. But I think, even if I really _did_ know, I still would’ve said yes, if it’s what I had to do. You know what I mean?”

“I think I do.”

“I wasn’t scared.” Tsume’s face was firm. “I told Orochimaru that, too. And he told me that I’d have to have sex with my contact when he finally come along to pass on my Intel, and that I absolutely couldn’t get caught _at all_ , and that I would be at the brothel for a long, long time. And that was okay, I thought, because it would be for Konoha, even though I knew I would really miss Kuromaru and Kakashi. Danzo once told me that you have to cheat, lie, steal, kill, and fuck whoever or whatever for Konoha. And if Orochimaru told me the same, then it had to be true, right?”

Tsume ran her fingers along the grain of Hiruzen’s desk for a moment. “Orochimaru didn’t lie to me. Grandmother did. So did lots of other people, but Orochimaru didn’t – he was one of the few who was really honest, and he talked to me, instead of just telling me what to do. He explained, and not many people like to explain… he didn’t treat me like a simpleton.

“Anyway, before I left, Orochimaru said there was a hole in me. A void, he called it, that I would be staring into. He said that I had to fill the void because I was going to be buried in filth, because if I didn’t fill the void, the filth would fill it for me, and then I wouldn’t like what I saw. He said… he said that he had seen the void, and the void was in him. I didn’t know what that meant at the time.”

Hiruzen closed his eyes as if in pain. “I’m afraid I do.”

Unfortunately, so did Danzo. Tsume, through Orochimaru, had easily summed up why Danzo was always in the darkness. With a sinking heart, Danzo realized he had lost his battle the void so long ago.

“Well, _I’m_ making sure I fill my void with puppies, because I figured I’d like what I see in the void, because there’s nothing wrong with puppies staring back at you, right? At least, I’m trying to fill the void.” Her eyes flickered to Danzo. “It seems like sometimes the void can’t get filled no matter how many puppies you stick in it, though. So then, Grandmother took me—”

“The seal,” Danzo prompted.

Tsume wiped her chin with her sleeve after finishing the last of the ramen. “Oh, that’s right. _Everything._ So, before Grandmother took me away, Orochimaru bit my toe, and put a seal on me that would convert my chakra into desire. That way, an Iwa shinobi wouldn’t notice I had chakra, because he’d just want to fuck me instead.”

“Here,” Danzo told Hiruzen, who was wincing over Tsume’s language, “I would like to add that it’s a _very_ effective siren seal and it’s not limited to Iwa nin. I would recommend talking to Jiraiya to get more information on it, since he eventually had to… fix it. My explanation of this modified siren seal would be poor and limited.”

“But you know what the seal does,” Hiruzen said as he accepted Tsume’s empty bowl and set it aside to be returned later to Ichiraku’s. She slurped some offered tea and he puffed his pipe.

“After I had a chance to study it extensively, but it required some… experimentation and some temporary modifications to flip the seal off. It wasn’t easy.”

Tsume’s eyes flickered from Danzo to Hiruzen. Her face went pale, and then bright red. “Wait – is Danzo in trouble because of the seal?” She lunged across the desk to grab Hiruzen’s sleeve, jerking the pipe out of his mouth. The cast around her right arm clunked heavily against the wood. “Danzo didn’t do anything wrong! He’s the only one who didn’t hurt me!”

Hiruzen looked dismayed as he attempted to extract Tsume’s death grip from his sleeve. “That’s not—”

“No! It’s not fair at all! Danzo was the only one who was nice and gentle and made me feel good, while the others didn’t! I – I wanted to make him feel good, too!”

Hiruzen floundered for a moment before gently covering Tsume’s mouth. “This is – Danzo is not in trouble here, child. After all, he removed you from the mission, which I fully support. All I want is to understand what happened. Mistakes were made, and I can’t fix those mistakes if I don’t know what they are.” Danzo forced himself not to hide his face as it burned with shame. “Did you just lick me?” Hiruzen pulled his hand away from Tsume’s mouth.

“Well, don’t put your hand where my tongue can reach it!”

Danzo thumped Tsume. “Licking anyone – especially your Hokage – is highly inappropriate, given our conversation.”

She glared at him. “You know it was my fault for what happened anyway.”

Danzo growled. “Tsume, we’ve discussed this before – it’s _not_ your fault.”

“My seal, my responsibility!” She pointed a clawed finger at him and snarled. “Mine!” Ooooh, somebody was getting uppity now that she was wearing her clan markings.

“ _Not_ the same thing. Orochimaru made the seal and put it on your body, not you. You were told—”

“I don’t—”

Hiruzen stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly. Tsume winced and clapped her hands over her ears. Danzo fell silent with a growl in his ragged breathing. “Listen to me,” Hiruzen said once their eyes turned upon him, “it is evident that this subject happens to be of great concern to Tsume. While I prefer reports to be given to me in a concise and punctual manner, I will excuse such today given the complexity of the situation and the inexperienced amongst us. And before we go any further…” Hiruzen fixed a stern glare upon Tsume. “The only two legged creature allowed to lick me is my wife. Don’t do that again, young lady.”

He waited until Tsume, flushing red, muttered her understanding of his statement.

“Now, Tsume, allow me to assuage your fears. You tell me what Danzo did that you perceive that he’s in trouble for, Danzo can explain his reasoning for such actions, and I shall render a verdict. Would that make you feel better?”

Tsume frowned. “No. Because Danzo didn’t do anything wrong – it was me!”

“And what did _you_ do that you think is wrong? And remember, it’s important to tell your Hokage everything.”

Tsume squirmed in her seat, pulling her legs free and dangling in front of her, and then crossing them at the knees. Danzo could see her feet – they flexed constantly at the ankles. He wished she wouldn’t slouch or sit so casually – it made her look younger than she was. “Well, I had sex with Danzo at the brothel, but he didn’t hurt me at all.” She raised her chin stubbornly. “I know how to make men feel good. I didn’t like doing it, but I wanted to for Danzo, because Danzo was Konoha, like me, and I could smell that he didn’t want to be there, that he really didn’t want to do what he had to do. I tried to make it nice for him, and he made it nice for me, which no one else ever tried before. And then later, after we escaped and he was trying to figure out how to turn off the seal, he said the arousal kept getting in the way and needed to take care of his erection, but he couldn’t on his own, so I gave him a hand, and then later, after that, when he was fixing the seal again, he gave _me_ a hand and I didn’t have to do a thing, and that was really nice. Uh, did I say something wrong?”

Hiruzen waved his pipe-holding hand, since his other hand covered his eyes half-way through her explanation. “No. Nothing’s wrong.” Hiruzen’s voice was weak. “I’m strongly reconsidering the necessity of knowing everything. I’m just… I’m trying _very_ hard right now _not_ imagining either of you having sex. _Especially_ Danzo.” He muttered something about how this was supposed to be Kagami’s job, not his.

Danzo barely suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, but couldn’t hide the irritation in his voice. “How traumatizing this must be for you, Hokage-sama.”

“Shut up. _You’re_ the reason I double-check chakra signatures on the other side of doors when I knock and am granted permission to enter.” Hiruzen swallowed a few times and then sat upright, his hand dropping away from his face. “Was this all that happened… between you and Danzo?”

“Well, there was more. Danzo was really nice and trained me on my nose and how to be a better ninja, and we had long conversations on summons and stuff.” Tsume’s gaze flickered over to Danzo.

“But, _sexually_ , that’s the extent of what happened?”

Tsume vigorously nodded her head. “Between Danzo and me, yeah. But, see, I deliberately used it against another man, so I _know_ that the seal has to be my responsibility. _I_ chose to accept the mission, and the seal came with the mission.” She looked so young and desperate as her left hand curled into a stubborn fist. “So, it _has_ to be my responsibility. It’s… it’s just _got_ to be.” Her voice cracked with unshed tears. Danzo wondered how much of her demand for responsibility was linked back to the rape in the ravine – perhaps by assuming responsibility and control, by insisting that she had wanted it to happen for her plan to work ( _five blast tags_ , really???), the horror of the rape wasn’t as haunting. She had so little control in this mission, buffered from one side to the other based on poor decisions made by the adults in her life, that she stubbornly clung to what she assumed she _could_ control. 

“I had imagined worse happened between you two, given the forceful involvement of the seal.” Hiruzen silenced Tsume’s protest with a raised hand, and then pointed at Danzo. “I’ll be glad to receive a report later from Jiraiya, but for now, a basic summary of what the seal does will help me see the proper context of everyone’s actions as the report is given. Danzo?”

Danzo closed his eye for a moment, wishing to be anywhere but here. Then he opened his eye, and trained his gaze on Tsume’s wild hair; she had some leaves tangled in it. The metal studded balls seemed to be gone for now. “It was a triple-layered siren seal, according to Jiraiya; I originally thought it was a seal-within-a-seal. Very complex. As Tsume mentioned earlier, part of its purpose was to turn awareness of her chakra signature into desire – the harder any man attempted to ignore Tsume and the effects of arousal and desire, the greater the man's sensitivity to chakra, the stronger the seal reinforced the arousal. It’s a _very_ strong variation of the siren seal.”

“So the only way to… quench… was to submit?”

“In short, yes. It’s much more complicated than that with its multiple reinforcements and layers, but that was the main command of the seal. That, and to meet Tsume’s desires, which in the brothel meant supplying the information she gathered with her nose, which meant that the men had to stay and get personal. Hokage-sama, the more you fight the desire, the worse it becomes.”

Hiruzen studied Tsume with a combined awe and sadness. “And you had to deal with the effects of the seal every day.”

She shrugged, looking uncertain. “Until Danzo figured out how to turn it off. Just temporary, he said, but that lasted long enough for Jiraiya-sensei to give me a mute switch.”

“I see. And Orochimaru placed the seal.”

“Yup.”

“Before your great-grandmother then sold you to the brothel, into prostitution.”

“Yup.” Tsume waved both of her hands in the air, as if this solidified her argument. Danzo leaned away from her swinging arms to prevent getting clobbered with the cast. “So, you can see that it wasn’t Danzo’s fault, and therefore he shouldn’t be punished.”

“Mmm. Well, I did tell Danzo before you got here that he showed good judgment in removing you from the brothel.”

Tsume brightened. “Good. So, anyway, after Grandmother sold me there, the ladies did a bunch of grooming and training with me for a week, because I had to make a really good debut at the auction.” Tsume saw Hiruzen wince, but didn’t see how Danzo’s grip tightened white-knuckled on the back of the chair. “I got a really good price,” she added hastily, as if this trivial information could readily assuage guilt. “The second highest on record.”

Danzo cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t recommend bragging about that.”

Tsume glared. “It’s not bragging if it’s the truth. Grandmother sold me for a thousand ryou – I brought in over thirty thousand at auction. Even though I know it’s the seal that made me desirable on the block, I know enough about numbers that I’m a pretty sweet deal.”

“This is quite true,” Hiruzen said with a weak voice, “but this mission is S rank, which means the clearance level a person is required to have before you can reveal the information is exceedingly high. Only a half dozen people outside Danzo or myself would have that clearance.”

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone anything.” Tsume still looked a little crushed as she swung her feet, and quite guilty, too. Danzo didn’t doubt that she somehow managed to tell her genin teammates all about her S-rank mission. He was both grateful and horrified. “I already look stupid and incompetent for getting mistaken as killed in battle and then being rescued from the enemy by Danzo – like I’d really be _friendly_ with Iwa shinobi and let them try brainwashing me – so having an expensive virginity wouldn’t really change that.” She perked up again. “Besides, Sakumo-sensei killed the man who bought my virginity, so that’s all right.”

Hiruzen carefully closed his hand around Tsume’s cast-encased wrist. “Far too much was demanded and stolen from you before your time, and you’ll never get the reward you deserve. It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Tsume replied immediately. She looked at Danzo for a long moment, her eyes searching. Danzo kept her gaze and tried to ignore the churning guilt and shame. She boldly lifted her chin then, as if reaching a decision, and turned back to Hiruzen. “But that’s what it means to be ninja,” she told Hiruzen resolutely. “Danzo taught me, you know. That sometimes you have to make sacrifices for Konoha that no one will ever really know about, but that’s okay – it’s gotta be okay. I figured that it was better me than Kushina or Kokoro. And if it was to protect someone like Kakashi,” she clenched her hand into a fist, “I would do it ten times over again. I’d take myself back to the brothel without anyone even asking me.”

Hiruzen’s answering smile was breathtaking in its gentleness. Danzo’s chest ached. “You are truly a treasure, Inuzuka Tsume.”

Tsume squirmed in her chair for a moment, unclenching her fist. “Thanks. Anyway, I got hammered a lot at the brothel, but I got the information. It was… there was a lot of blood, sir, but Madame Kai patched me up right as rain, and even taught me how to patch myself up so I can do some healing, but other than that and the fucking and the sniffing, I didn’t do much of anything. And then Danzo came, I passed the information on to him while we had sex, and then he came back for me. I know he wasn’t supposed to, because he had to get the information to Orochimaru, but I am so glad that he came back. Oh, and I have a present for Danzo!”

Both men were silent for a moment at Tsume’s abrupt change of subject. Tsume wiggled around as she rooted through the many pockets in her fur-lined coat, before pulling up a small scroll. “I know this isn’t the best place probably to do this, but I don’t want to wait before it’s too late.” She held the scroll out to Danzo. “ _I_ trust you,” she said firmly as she met his startled gaze, her eyes bright and lips curling in a bold smile that hinted of fang.

Danzo stared at the scroll, unmoving, until Hiruzen prodded him with the stem of his pipe. Danzo reluctantly reached out and closed his hand around the scroll, but he didn’t lift it free from Tsume’s grip.

Tsume released the scroll. “Aunt Natsumi was so glad that I’m alive – she said I’ve always been her favorite – and I told her that I wanted to sign a summon so I could give it as a present to the person who saved me, and Aunt Natsumi said I didn’t have to sign a summon to do that because she wanted me to reverse-summon to find out what my guardian is, and she said I could give you the summon as a gift.” Her eyes were bright and full of life, love, gratitude, and trust.

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone looked at _him_ with such wonder. Feeling numb and distant from himself, as if he were nothing more than a bystander to his own body, Danzo opened the scroll. It unwound, larger and larger, in his hands. Impossibly large compared to the little scroll she had given him.

It was a summoning contract a legendary creature – the baku.

“Aunt Natsumi said that you took away her nightmare – me being dead and gone. She said… She said the baku are guardians of children and they devour nightmares, and she always knew the Second’s favorite apprentice had it in him all along, even if it was really, _really_ deep down. Aunt Natsumi also said that you were scary enough to be your own nightmare, and I agree, but don’t tell her I told you that part.”

Danzo’s mind was completely blank. He didn’t know if this was good or bad. Tsume gave willingly, either completely ignorant of the actual cost or no matter how much it cost, because she was every bit as much a dog as her clan name implied. The dog always came groveling back on its stomach, tail wagging, begging for more, eager to the point of stupidity to prove its undying loyalty and love in the face of abuse. Tsume wasn’t kidding when she said she was going to fill her void with puppies.

_Danzo_ hurt _Tsume_ , and _she_ licked _his_ hand while begging for _forgiveness_.

Hiruzen, as if sensing the turmoil shredding Danzo’s mind and spirit, gently led Tsume and her empty ramen bowl from the room. “I think this is all the information I need from you right now. You are a very rare soul, Tsume, and I will speak to you later again, tonight. Suffice to say, no one is in trouble, least of all Danzo.”

“Okay, Hokage-sama! I better go find Kakashi and Kushina so they don’t worry. Kuromaru would know where I was at, so he wouldn’t be worried, you know.”

“Yes, child, you do that.”

Hiruzen shut the door quietly to the voices _(“Hey, don’t touch my collar like that again, Mister Super-Secret ANBU Cousin Nara-jerk!” “Gah, what a bother…”_ ), and then reseated himself in Tsume’s chair instead of his own. Only a little distance and air separated him from Danzo – the desk was no longer a viable barrier. Danzo found himself clenching the summoning contract as he struggled to breathe.

“You are _also_ a wonder, Danzo,” Hiruzen said; his voice was as soft as a puppy’s belly. “You _really_ lucked out this time.”

The steel-wrapped gentleness of Hiruzen’s voice hurt more than anger could. Danzo trembled. “Hiruzen – what the hell did I _do_? Why does she do this?” He flung the contract away, his skin flushed and on fire. “I raped her, Hiruzen.” He saw her lying naked in the red sheets, her face filled with wonder as she touched his lips. Then he saw her again, eyes wide with horror as she shredded her own flesh, ripping her thigh and the semen that smeared it. “There was, there was blood—” Danzo flung himself at Hiruzen’s garbage pail just as his stomach finally rebelled. Hiruzen sighed and moved to the floor. He crouched behind Danzo and rubbed his back gently as Danzo vomited foul-tasting bile. Danzo remembered how Tsume had disappeared beneath him when they were on their hands and knees, sinking together into the plush mattress, of how small she had seemed beside Daisuke’s corpse. “She was so fucking _little_.”

“See, I don’t ever get why you expect me to flog you. You always do a much better job punishing yourself than I ever could,” Hiruzen said in a casual voice. “Your underlings in ANBU say you’re sadistic, although I’ve always found you to be more masochistic. Always been a glutton for punishment, really.”

And to think, Danzo hadn’t realized he was masochistic until he bit himself nearly two weeks ago, after pinning Tsume to a rock while barely a hair away from raping her again. Huh. Maybe Hiruzen really did know him.

“I can see how your guilt has tormented you, the emotional turmoil you’ve struggling with in this Ops. I didn’t know what Orochimaru did or why, my friend, but my ignorance is not an excuse. You are right – this entire Black Ops was a farce. A siren seal before being sold into direct prostitution? I assure you – that wasn’t at all what Kagami and I had planned. Fortunately though, it would seem that Tsume will be okay.”

“You don’t fucking know that.” Danzo remembered Tsume’s blank gaze, the wheezing breaths after she had ripped out an attacking Kumo nin’s spine, and her shriek when she woke up beneath Jiraiya before turning into a flurry of battering limbs and raking claws.

He remembered how she had given Sakumo the five blast tags she had tucked away in her cast, ready to sacrifice herself after deliberately maneuvering into a position where Daisuke would rape her. He remembered the look on Sakumo’s face when he received the blast tags, as if just then realizing the depths of depravity that Tsume had willingly suffered in order to do what she figured was right. No one – especially a bright-eyed twelve-year old girl – should ever have such an expectation of themselves. In the depths of the shriveled remains of his soul, Danzo desperately hoped that Tsume would never become like him.

Hiruzen sighed and seated himself on the floor. “And neither do you. You know, I don’t think I ever told you what the Second told me after I made my first kill. I was nine years old, and it was another boy, just barely older that me, and I had the choice to kill, or be killed. Tobirama said that life was always going to give us shit. No matter what you do, where you go, whatever happens, there will always be shit, whether it’s through Mother Nature or human nature. Either way, it’s up to us to decide what to do with it.

“We can wallow in the shit, let it fester our wounds and poison us with infection, or we can use it as manure, to fertilize and feed our experiences so we can grow like the trees in which we’ve built our Hidden Village. It seems to me that Tsume has decided that she isn’t going to wallow and fester. So that leaves you, and what you’re going to do with this shit.”

Danzo resentfully pushed the garbage pail away as he swiped his mouth clean on the back of his sleeve. “You know me.”

Hiruzen’s long-suffering sigh could put a martyr to shame. “Yes. I’m afraid that I really do – I _have_ spent the last forty years watching you wallow and fester.”

Danzo pressed the palm of his hand against his empty eye socket. He wondered what would happen if he kept pressing and pressing, until his skull fractured and his brain leaked all over like a broken egg yolk. “You wouldn’t have raped her. Nor would the First, or the Second.”

“You don’t truly know that – especially considering how sadistic Tobirama was. I’ve always suspected the only reason Tobirama invented the Edo Tensei in the first place was so he could bring back his enemies and kill them a second time. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, it’s rather apropos you were his favorite.”

Danzo had far too many scars and a number of terrifying memories to ever believe that he was the favorite of Senju Tobirama. To be fair to Tobirama, kind and gentle Hashirama had been the family anomaly, since the Senju clan was notoriously brutal and bloodthirsty – especially in going toe-to-toe with their rival clan, the Uchiha. Just look at the lauded Slug Princess, no matter how talented she was at healing people. Theirs was a brutal, cunning nature that was every bit as lethal as the Inuzuka clan.

No one should ever be Tobirama’s favorite. It had been horrific.

“Besides,” Hiruzen continued blithely, “you admitted that you were influenced by a seal that Orochimaru told you nothing about. I would’ve been just as easily influenced – more so, no doubt, because your self-control has always been much greater than mine.”

Danzo despised kindness. It was a terrible weakness – he could feel his resolution being sucked away by Hiruzen’s good nature. He wanted to throttle his friend. “I had time to think before it happened though. I knew where things were going. I should’ve stopped myself!”

“Yes, and you possibly would’ve utterly sunk the mission by acting so suspicious and familiar with a stranger.” Hiruzen dropped his hand away from Danzo’s back and hugged his knees to his chest. “I certainly agree that the situation is very messed up, and Tsume is equally messed up. However, the dynamics aren’t as straightforward between you two as you would like, unfortunately. Tsume, as a kunoichi of this village, is aware of what is required of her. It doesn’t make what happened any less horrible, nor does it excuse anyone’s behavior, but you seem dismissive of how Tsume had months to come to accept and expect to sleep with her contact as ordered by Orochimaru. She braced herself for the inevitable – she’s had time to prepare herself. She’s ahead of the game, compared to you. And the law considers her and other genin to have legal adulthood, no matter the emotional and mental immaturity of their youth.”

“But the law _does_ take in consideration their physical and mental immaturity and still declares them minors. That’s why guardians have to approve of high-ranking missions before they can even be offered, and we’re both aware that Shinzou did _not_ have her own granddaughter’s best interests at heart.” It was also why Internal Affairs existed – because there would always be those who would fail in their duties to the more vulnerable. The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions, and Kagami was always the first to try to reroute traffic on such a road. “So what are we going to do about Tsume?”

Hiruzen was silent for a long moment. “Children are often far more resilient than adults are, and in many ways, she’s more a child than an adult. It’s both a blessing and a curse that her traumatic brain injury will likely always keep her in that child-like mindset.”

Danzo missed having his back rubbed. “The fact is, because this is an S rank Black Ops, Tsume will always be isolated. You can talk all you want about how she’s growing from the experience, but she’s left with no one to turn to with the truth, to seek guidance and emotional stability and all that shit. Of those who are fully aware, Jiraiya would be a fumbling buffoon for all his well-meaning tripe, and I really don’t see her reaching out to you. That leaves me.” And not Sakumo, because Danzo had been the one she demanded for in that ravine. Danzo didn’t know if Tsume would _ever_ reach out to Sakumo for that part of her life. Tsume had wanted to protect Sakumo’s innocence, deeming it far more important than her own self-worth.

Danzo was, quite frankly, terrified of being responsible for the mental and emotional well-being of the girl he had raped in the first place.

After a moment of hesitation, Danzo shifted around until his back was leaning against Hiruzen’s. It was odd and awkward to be seated against the Hokage like they were seven year old children instead of forty-five year old adults, but he could feel his emotions settling down, drawing back from the razor-sharp abyss that his mind had perched. “I know I have my issues, Hiruzen.”

Hiruzen relaxed again Danzo’s back. “Danzo, your _issues_ have issues. You’re so neurotic that you have your own exemption sub clause to pass the minimal required psychosocial stability for active ANBU.”

…what? “ _Really_?”

“Um… You didn’t hear it from me.”

Danzo shook his head. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. “Be that as it may, I knew that Tsume was reaching out to me in her pain, when we were alone in Earth. I pushed her back instead — or at least I’ve tried. I didn’t want her attaching herself to me in any shape, way or form – it’s _unhealthy_ , especially after what I did to her. I’m a brutal, cruel man with no compunction against hurting the innocent to succeed in a mission, and yet I somehow established a trust with her when she was ten years old.” His eyes strayed to the summoning contract, crumpled where it lay. “I… I have no idea how _that_ even happened. It’s not right. It’s just not right.”

“She was like a stray that followed you home, my friend. Or perhaps _you’re_ the stray that looked grumpy and pitiful and lonely as you sat in a dirty mud puddle, so she decided to save you the effort of following her home, and kept you.”

Danzo didn’t need to see the look on Hiruzen’s face to know that the man was amused. “That is _not_ a fair assessment, no matter how loose a definition she has of puppies.”

Hiruzen’s reply was a chuckle. “Ah, Danzo. I feel like you won’t be the last misfit she collects.”

Danzo stared at the wall in front of him, glad for the support at his back even though the angle and hard wooden floors made his hip joints ache and hamstring throb. “Fine then. Except you forget that the stray she brought home is a rabid, wild mongrel that bit her offered hand. I broke that trust – even if her trust in me is still intact, _I_ don’t trust _me_. Yet _still_ she reaches out to me, and I _must_ push her back. She reaches because she is hurting by what happened, no matter how mature she tries to be. For better or for worse, Tsume has certain expectations left over from the brothel, and that’s going to have severe consequences in the future.”

“Hmm. No. You’re right. I’ll have to bring in counseling for her, but in the meantime, I don’t see any harm in her reaching out to you.”

“It’s wrong because she’s the leaves bathed in the sunlight, and I’m the roots washed in darkness.” There was a void, and he had long filled that void with the things better left in darkness – envy, bitterness, cowardness, hatred, resentment. “Leaves wither and die when they turn from the sun. You _don’t_ know what I did to her in the dark.” Or what other people had done to Tsume in the dark, especially in the dark of the ravine, although he knew that Hiruzen would soon learn.

He felt Hiruzen’s back vibrate with laughter. “Your metaphors leave much to be desired, my friend.”

“Shut up, Hiruzen. It’s just as valid as the Second’s metaphor on shit.”

Hiruzen continued to laugh. “Trust me, the Second couldn’t come up with very good metaphors either. That talent belonged to the First, although Hashirama rarely exercised such. Ah, Danzo, my dear friend, can’t you _see_? In your darkness lies a sturdy, unbreakable shelter from the horrors Tsume had to endure, and _that’s_ what she’s reaching for. Everyone needs a space, a shelter from the storm, where they feel safe. You give that to her, in a place where prying eyes and gossiping tongues can never reach. You never harmed her – hurt, yes, but not harmed, because you’ve done everything you can to admit your wrongdoing, explain why it was so to her, and to make reparation.

“That is more than what anyone else has ever done to her, and why you succeed where Shinzou failed. Shinzou never apologized for her wrongdoings; she _never_ admitted that she had wronged Tsume – instead, Shinzou allowed a twelve year old girl to think that she was the one who caused her grandmother’s resentment and bitterness. Such actions will forever haunt that young girl, I suspect. You, on the other hand, have done your best to repair your wrongdoings. All this time, you’ve talked about how others took from her, but you seem unaware of what you _gave_ Tsume. Not only did you give her hope, not only did you give her suffering a reason, to strengthen her Will of Fire, you _rescued_ her from that fate. She doesn’t feel that the price she paid was all for nothing, or sees the price as useless and unnecessary. You made her feel wanted—”

“Not in the way you’d approve.”

Hiruzen’s voice stuttered. “Well, she _did_ say you were the only one who didn’t hurt her… the only one who made it feel… good.” There was a lengthy pause. “I’m never going to get that image out of my head now, you sadistic bastard. I hope you’re happy.”

Danzo elbowed Hiruzen. “There are worse images to have in your head.”

“There are just some things a person shouldn’t have to share, though, and while you were always generous with the blanket when we had to bed down together during missions… Well, thank goodness it was the blanket and not your sheets, I suppose, given that the only real lover you ever had was Torifu…. You seem to have some unnatural closeness to your teammates. Anyway.” Hiruzen cleared his throat. “Right now, my back is exposed and vulnerable, and your only response has been to prop it up with your own. Up until now, I never really spared a thought of how _unusual_ this is. I would trust my back to be covered by any number of shinobi in Konoha, but I also know I’m strong enough to defend my back should they take advantage. There’s never been any doubt with you, my friend – I would trust my back to you _especially_ if I was too weak to defend myself – and I like to think you share that same level of trust with me.” 

Danzo looked at his hands. He was not defenseless – and neither was the God of Shinobi.

(“ _I trust you.”)_

Between the child who freely gifted him a summoning contract, and the freely-exposed back he was pressed against, Danzo felt lost and small. He would just as readily let Tsume at his back as he had Hiruzen, and Kagami… and, yeah, he supposed he would also do so with that fool-of-a-subordinate of his. Sakumo was a good man – a better man than Danzo could ever hope to be. “You’re a trustworthy and honorable man, Hiruzen. I’m…” _Petty. Cruel. Bitter. Ambitious._ “…me.”

“Your heart is as intimate to me as my wife’s. You are the brother of my soul. You are indeed every bit as cruel and temperamental as you think you are, but your honor… eh, it’s a little lackluster, but you still have it. I’m not the only person who recognizes your bizarre brand of honor. Tsume sees it too, and however good you made her feel probably doesn’t have much bearing… well, actually, it probably does. Because you didn’t _have_ to be kind, especially when we all know you’re not a kind man, and yet you still were. In the midst of this war, to a child who had been sold into slavery by her trusted guardian, who had been belittled half her life because of the brain injury, you gave her kindness and dignity, for no other reason than because she needed it. You weren’t getting anything out of it – in fact, it probably made you feel worse to be so gentle. Whether you like it or not, you are a trustworthy and honorable man. In your own odd way.”

Danzo felt wrong with the conversation, like the words were right but the descriptions were all wrong. He didn’t _fit_. It was like being described as a fungus – Hiruzen thought Danzo was a rare, delicious mushroom, when Danzo was really just jock’s itch. “No decent person in their right mind would see my behaviors any more than the reprehensible evil that they are.”

“Yeah, well, I think we can safely agree that Tsume hasn’t been in her right mind since she was found in the Nara forest, yes?” Hiruzen’s back disappeared for a moment as he leaned forward and grabbed his pipe from on top of the desk. He relit it and shoved it into his mouth, settling against Danzo once more. In fact, it felt like Hiruzen was making himself comfortable. “I’m not really getting any paperwork done like this. Why does my work ethics always suffer when you’re near?”

“You are not blaming me for this one, Hiruzen!”

“I do think we can also safely agree that Tsume does need someone to reach out to, someone who can be that safe shelter for her heart. And since you’re going to refuse, it will have to be someone else. So… which adult do we know whom Tsume trusts and loves and respects, and who would be a good mentor and guiding force in her life? She’ll need _that_ even more than therapy.”

Danzo could see where this conversation was heading. “Uh. I’ve already told Sakumo about the Black Ops.”

“Did you, now” Hiruzen’s voice was flat, as if he had fully expected Sakumo to be told about an S-rank Black Ops that he had nothing to do with. “And how did he take it?”

Danzo stared at a spot on Hiruzen’s wall, watching the shadows play across it as the wind ruffled tree branches outside. “That would be… the second half of my report.” He sighed. “I took Tsume with me to train her tracking abilities and to try to better understand her capabilities, when we were moving the wagon train of wounded. She inherited Shinzou’s ninken, and in an uncharacteristic flash of practical ingenuity, Tsume decided that she could ride one of the ninken like a samurai rides a horse. At the time, she was partially incapacitated because both arms were injured. You saw the cast.”

“But safe,” Hiruzen interjected. “Shinzou’s ninken _are_ the best.”

“Yes. But we were found three days into our travel by a party of forty-two Iwa nin, led by Iwa’s explosion expert, Daisuke. They were underground and heading for the wagon train. I sent Tsume off to alert Sakumo as reinforcement, and then went after the Iwa nin myself to buy some time.”

Hiruzen coughed around his pipe. “I know you still feel guilty about the Second, but do you really think that dying like Tobirama would absolve that particular guilt?”

Danzo felt vindicated when he jabbed his elbow hard into Hiruzen’s side, delighted with the grunt of pain. “Shut up. Only Daisuke matched the skills of any one of the twenty that took out Sensei; the other forty-one I could handle without dying.” He leaned his head back, resting it gently against Hiruzen’s. “I told Tsume to stay at the train once she reached it. Instead, the disobedient little imp bled all over her forehead protector as a message for help, and had one of the ninken carry it to Sakumo. And then she and the other three ninken followed after me.”

Hiruzen coughed again. It sounded more like a choked laugh. “The disobedient imp and her three ninken. Her three ninken that have been fighting in battles for eight years, personally trained by one of Konoha’s greatest kunoichi… One of the greatest kunoichi in the history of the Elemental Nations. Off to help you fight forty-two Iwa nin. I see.”

“Her excuse mimed Sakumo’s, that she couldn’t just abandon her teammates.”

( _“You came back for me.”)_

Hiruzen didn’t bother disguising his laughter. “For someone who keeps to himself, who desperately attempts to refuse any and all overtures of friendship, you somehow manage to inspire the greatest loyalty in the most unexpected sources.”

“Daisuke saw her, and separated her from the battle. She used that damn seal on him, and he fell for it.”

Hiruzen’s silence was no longer amused.

“Sakumo found them while Daisuke was… thoroughly distracted with Tsume and completely under the influence of the seal. He promptly killed Daisuke. Tsume didn’t want Sakumo to see or touch her, and demanded for me.” He remembered, once again, the way Tsume was curled up beneath Sakumo’s shirt, coated with a mixture of her blood and the enemy’s, trying to comfort her ninken on the other side of that imposing stone wall with a broken voice. That image superimposed itself over the image of him in that ratty little bathroom, staring at the blood smeared on his body. “I… Sakumo wasn’t read into the Black Op and I only peripherally, but I told him about the mission anyway. He said he didn’t know how to patch up her bleeding heart if he didn’t know where the blood was coming from. And he’s right. So I told him where the blood was coming from.”

Hiruzen grunted. “Really, Danzo, after everything you’ve reported, you telling Sakumo all about this S Rank Black Ops is the least shocking of all. And it saves me the effort of doing so myself, because he’s the only other adult we _can_ trust to help Tsume recover. Well, besides Inuzuka Natsumi.”

Danzo would commit seppuku before Natsumi found out that he had raped her twelve year old alpha, as that would be a far less painful, much more merciful way to die. He didn’t have anything sharp on hand, but he bet that Hiruzen’s pen would work in a pinch. Hiruzen would probably never get the blood out of the inkwell, but that was a small price to pay… “Yeah, if you don’t mind burying what’s left of me right after you tell her.”

“Hmm. No, I’m sure she wouldn’t leave any evidence for me to bury. But there still remains the punishment for interfering in the Black Op. Personally, I think you’ve whipped yourself enough and I’m quite grateful for your interference, but I know you don’t feel like your guilt is satisfied. So, for your punishment, you have to come to dinner tomorrow with me and Biwako. I plan to invite Kagami and Fumiko.”

Danzo wasn’t sure how that was a punishment (aside from how he couldn’t stand the weakness of his mother, personified in his half-sister), except that Hiruzen always believed it was better to kill with kindness than with cruelty.

“My wife has been moaning about a lack of female companionship ever since Ken stopped dating, something about there being far too much testosterone at her dining room table? Puberty is a real hassle at times, you know. Maybe Tsume, Sakumo, Kakashi, and you could join us for dinner. I bet we could get Asuma to share some of his toys with Kakashi. Tsume, Biwako, and Fumiko could have some quality woman time together, since her Aunt Natsumi is… not all there, if you know what I mean.”

“Tsume would like that.” Especially given that Fumiko liked to use her fists, preferring the intimacy of drawing blood with her hands, instead of the impersonality of bladed weapons. He bet that his half-sister and Tsume would get along like a house on fire.

“Good. I think we’re having barbequed beef tonight. Bring dessert. Biwako seems to think that sweets will put me into an early grave, and has been depriving me for the last year.” Hiruzen said nothing more, content to lean against his lifelong friend and smoke to the sounds of children playing outside his window.

Danzo buried his face in his hands and tried to knit together the shattered pieces of his psyche and soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Hot damn, Danzo is such a vicious, petty man.)
> 
> So, had Tsume been successfully apprenticed to the kennel keeper, can you imagine the look on Danzo's face when Orochimaru would've sent him up there to make contact with Tsume?
> 
> "For this mission, you will be responsible for delousing some bitches at a brothel..."
> 
> For my readers who are enjoying Aunt Natsumi, you all should totally check out Trail of Tears, if you haven't already. It features the Life And Times of Aunt Natsumi, with her Two Trusty Sidekicks, Uchiha Izuna and Senju Tobirama. (They get along famously well together when the only other person to get along with is Aunt Natsumi...) 
> 
> Honestly, I hadn't expected Bashira to still be alive come the Alpha Years, but then I figured, she's a bit more sensible than other Inuzuka women, so why not. She's likely to grow old if she's not going around making enemies like Shinzou, or being a walking international incident waiting to happen like Natsumi.


	23. Interlude - the Tale of the First Mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus mythology!
> 
> So, legends and myths are like a game of telephone, before the telephone is even invented. A story gets told here; it gets tweaked a generation later; someone decided to translate a word differently; languages evolve; and before you know it, dragons in western mythology is destructive hoarders of precious goods and collectors of virgins, and dragons in eastern mythology are blessed messengers from the gods. 
> 
> And that is how we have the Legend of the First Mother. While the other clans - largely paternal - focus on the Sage of Six Paths and his sons, the maternal clan of the Inuzuka are going to focus on the person who brought the Sage's two sons into the world. Because someone had to sleep with Otsutsuki Hagoromo, since I doubt the man pulled a Zeus and had his sons leap out of his thigh fully formed.
> 
> Tale of the First Mother was briefly mentioned in the last chapter, in which Tsume is delighted to have her very own Juubi, just like her ancestor. (Can you imagine Jiraiya trying to write lurid fanfiction on the Sage of Six Paths meeting the future mother of his children? I can, and I am immensely amused. Let's all just pretend that this is what sets him on the path to writing Ichi Ichi in the Misfits 'verse...)

We know her; _we_ speak of her. She is wild as the thunder and bright as lightning in the dark sky.

We know her; _we_ speak of her. She dances with the wind and runs with the waves.

When the Juubi, his ten tails a’swinging, sweeps the country and sunders life, she flies in his wake with laughter in the air. Ten tails a’swinging cannot kill her.

The Sage is bright like sunshine. She withers in light. The Sage dispels darkness. She thrives in shadows.

Come to me, says the Sage, golden as the dawn, golden as the sunset, and be one with me.

Not I, not I, she laughs. She is a firefly amidst the shadows, and she chases the darkness of the Ten Tails.

In me shall you stay and together we shall be one, says the Sage. And he traps the Juubi within his breast, and within the moon.

She cries, for there is no more darkness, no more shadow. Her spark is gone, and she howls her sorrow to the moon.

We know her; _we_ speak of her.

Says the sage, I am the sun, but the greatest light casts the greatest shadow. Fly to me, Zaka Hotaru, and I shall set you aglow even in the greatest light.

So she comes to the Sage, comes to the Juubi, and they embrace together, three as one, in a field of clover. They glimmer and glow like a firefly. The day embraces night, and together they become twilight.

The Sage gives her seed; she begets him shadow and heart. The Sage gives her seed; she begets him light and love. One for each – each as his own. The Sage gives her seed; she begets him spark – spark for the heart, spark for the moonlight. One as her own, a spark that glows.

We know her; _we_ speak of her.

From the two came three. One for dark, one for light, one for spark, and they scatter. Then the Sage sunders into six, and the ten into nine, and she dances once more with the wind and the waves.

We know her; _we_ speak of her.

She flies across the prairies; she flickers through the forests; she soars in the shadows. ‘Twixt her sons is enmity and nine beasts begotten from the tenth wander the earth with their tails a’swinging, but her daughter is the spark.

We know her; _we_ speak of her.

She roams the earth for the Juubi. Inu Zaka. The Six Paths lead back to the Mother.

Inu Zaka.

We know her; _we_ speak of her. We her daughter, we the spark, remember the First Mother.


	24. Delta Years - Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My surgery went very well. My husband got me a brand new laptop, and I must say - it's so not going very well. The keys are all in the wrong place. I haven't had this many typos in years. Also, I fail to see why it's acceptable that the preinstalled Microsoft Word on my computer requires me to buy a subscription. I am OUTRAGED. Times like this makes me fondly recall Windows 3.0, when technology was more simple, instead of nickle-and-diming a body to death. (I think I was 14 years old...)
> 
> The free Wordpad ain't cutting it either. The formatting doesn't copy/paste over the way it should, and it doesn't have spellcheck. HOW HARD IS IT TO INCLUDE A SPELLCHECK. What is wrong with this world???

Tsume stalked into the kitchen with Naruto perched on her hip and a renewed vigor in her steps. Naruto held on to her shoulder with one arm, and hugged his cup of instant ramen noodles to his chest with his other. The cup ramen was looking as squished and bent as cup ramen probably had the tendency to become in the prolonged grasp of a tenacious three year old.

"Put that out," Tsume told the Hokage as she stalked past him. "Or I'll hose you down with a water dragon." Really – he knew better than to smoke in her house. It clogged her sinuses and made it harder to detect subtle scents. Not that it mattered right now – the scent of the Kyuubi's chakra was cloying and heady, thickly blanketing close-surrounding odors.

Hiruzen chuckled as he snuffed out his pipe. "A little overkill, isn't that?"

Tsume didn't say anything. She was dressed in regulation pants and a long white shirt; she also wore her jounin vest, but left it unzipped, and her feet were bare. As she gently set Naruto down on the edge of the sink, a rumbling was heard. It swiftly turned into a stampede of sound just before eleven puppies and Kiba stormed into the kitchen. The puppies launched themselves at everyone all at once, stumbling over their own paws and sliding on the pale yellow bamboo flooring as they surged at the four men seated in the kitchen. Kuromaru followed at a more sedate pace, and Nagumi came limping up the rear. The elder ninken looked on, long-suffering but patient.

  
Kiba barreled into his mother's legs with so much force that she had to cling to the floor with chakra. He reached up and tugged hard at her pants. "Breakfast?" Then he reached up higher, hooked his hands into her pocket, and lifted his feet. Predictably, he and the pants slid down to the floor with a loud thud. Two puppies immediately pounced on him with tails wagging and tongues licking everywhere.

"Serves you right," Tsume told Kiba, glancing at him and the other occupants of the kitchen as she undid the bandages that Hana had earlier wrapped around Naruto's feet. Fugaku immediately slapped an exasperated hand over his eyes and Yahiko turned bright red and looked in the opposite direction of Tsume. Danzo sipped his tea-flavored cream and seemed to be pondering the value of another raisin muffin. At least he cleaned up the crumbs.

  
Hiruzen coughed, careful to keep his gaze trained on Danzo. "While I firmly believe that you have a right to wear whatever you wish in your home, Tsume, and while we're all aware of the historical significance of the _lack_ of Inuzuka wardrobe, I do humbly request that you include underwear in whatever your fashion endeavor might be whilst I'm present."

Tsume snorted. "I don't know why anyone's bothered by my bare ass. It's not like none of you haven't seen it before." And two of the four adult men present had tapped it too, no matter how poorly she remembered what happened with Fugaku.

Hiruzen grinned as he slouched in the kitchen chair. "Oh, but I haven't. Is it as lovely as the rumors claim?" He shrugged at the shifty-eyed glare that Danzo sent him, and the wide-eyed embarrassment on the faces of the Uchiha. "Still, there are _puppies_ present."

"Puppies hardly care one whit about nudity, trust me on this." Tsume nonetheless bent and shooed the puppies away before tugging her pants back into place at her hips, instead of leaving them pooled at her ankles. "Here." She paused with Naruto's feet long enough to fish around in the ceramic bear and handed Kiba one of the raisin muffins. "Now, go sit with the nice Danzo-san over there, yes." She barred her fangs in a challenging grin at Danzo's glare. "And don't touch the Uchiha – you can smell where they've been!"

"Yay, Mom!" Kiba tripped twice, and then got into a minor brawl when one of the puppies accidentally knocked his raisin muffin onto the floor, and then another two puppies decided to see if the muffin was worthy canine food. It was engulfed in a matter of seconds after three more puppies decided that they could have whatever their siblings were having. All five puppies agreed, tails eagerly tick-tocking, that the muffin was indeed worthy canine food and they nosed around for more. Kiba went crying back to Tsume, once more tugging on her pants.

"It's going to be one of those days, and it's not even nine in the morning," Tsume grumbled. She picked up Kiba and deposited him on the kitchen counter beside Naruto, then handed them both raisin muffins. Kiba was noisy in his appreciation, jamming it into his mouth and spilling crumbs all over the floor. Four puppies crowded around Tsume's feet, eager to clean up Kiba's mess. Naruto was quiet though, torn between eating his muffin and keeping his cup ramen safe. Naruto eventually stuffed the cup ramen down the front of his pajamas, and carefully pinched off bits of the muffin to eat.

Tsume finished unwinding the bandages around Naruto's feet, and then stepped back for the others to see. "They look better than last night," she told Danzo, pointing. Naruto froze in mid-bite, thin shoulders hunching and wide blue eyes darting wildly about as all attention turned on him. Tsume wrapped an arm around his shoulders, mostly to keep him in place because she had a feeling he was just a breath away from making another escape attempt.

"I told you he would heal," Danzo said, setting down his tea. Naruto's feet no longer looked like two raw slabs of meat; the bottoms were a mottle of plum-purple bruises and scabs now. Naruto still winced as Tsume poked and prodded, but he was also frightfully silent. The Uchiha were also silent, although Fugaku's scent was shifting from a low-simmering bitter-anger to the white-hot sear of rage, so very much like their time together in the aftermath of the Third Shinobi World War, when he felt Itachi and Shisui were in danger. She was delighted to be able to smell it so clear over the odor of the Kyuubi.

Naruto bore a strong physical resemblance to his father, but the quiet was unnerving and shy, rather than steadfast and watchful. Kushina wouldn't know what silence was even it came up behind and kicked her in the ankle. Sakumo always said the only one on his team who knew anything about being quiet was Kokoro. (" _Yeah? That's because I can't get a word in edge-wise half the time with these two._ ")

"We were discussing the possibility of you adopting Naruto," Hiruzen said.

"What's there to discuss? _What_ possibility?" Tsume asked as she rewrapped Naruto's feet. "I absolutely refuse to send Kushina-chan's son back to any place that caused him to seek refuge in my kennels, especially when he was as naked as the day he was born and it was cold and snowy outside! What kind of people are running that orphanage? I have decided that he's mine, and that's that."

Tsume didn't have to look at Danzo to know that he was giving Fugaku a smug look as he replied. "I never expected any less. However, there's paperwork to be done."  
She waved her hand, irritated, because she never liked how people were just sticklers for having every single line filled out correctly before they would accept the paperwork. "And all that other legal mumbo-jumbo shit, yeah, I know. Kakashi was the only one I never had to sign a lot of paperwork on." She sighed. "I never had to sign anything in triplicate back that."

"One question, Tsume, and then one other item." Tsume faced the Hokage expectantly. His eyes were sharp as he studied her, and his scent cautious. "I offered you the adoption of Naruto once before, and you turned me down." Fugaku's face was closed and still, and Yahiko looked as confused as he smelled, which was difficult to detect beneath the Kyuubi's scent. Tsume increased the chakra at her nose.

Tsume turned back to Naruto, and finished wrapping his feet. Her hands moved more slowly. "You did, and I did."

"Do you remember what you told me at that time?"

Tsume carefully cupped Naruto's face and studied his blue eyes as the kitchen brightened with morning sun. Gosh, he looked so much like Mooncalf. It was a wonder she had never seen the resemblance before. "I'm sorry," she whispered, shoulders hunching forward. "You asked me the day after I lost my friends, my ninken, my clan. I was… I was literally scraping the remains of my cousin off the ground when you approached me. But I don't remember if you told me _this_ was the son of my best friends."

(" _Don't order me to take the baby, Hokage-sama. Please, don't. I'm too scared."_

_"Scared? **You**? How is that possible? Is it the Kyuubi you smell from the child that… that frightens you?"_

_"No. I'm scared of **me**. I'm scared of Inuzuka Shinzou's spirit. I'm scared that if you give me a baby that I hate, I will become my grandmother!_")

The Hokage clicked his tongue. "You never gave me the chance to explain who his parents were, and after I ordered it to never be spoken, no one probably got around to telling you." He carefully didn't mention that he would've expected Tsume to recognize the familial scent. "You said you were too scared to take him, because you hated the Kyuubi, and you couldn't be sure that you wouldn't treat him the same way that Shinzou had treated you. We both agreed that not even the jinchuuriki should suffer that."

Tsume patted Naruto's head, and then combed her fingers through his hair. Gosh, his hair was the same kind of dandelion fluff as his sire. She was going to _love_ brushing Naruto's hair.

"Why," asked the Hokage very carefully, "do you think that risk is any less _now_ than it was three years ago?"

Tsume stared out of her kitchen windows for a moment. The world was shrouded in a virginal white. She always liked winter – it seemed bleak to many, but to her, it was just the potential of new beginning sleeping just below the surface. Scents always seemed more crisp and fresh, and the world smelled fresh and new. "Hokage-sama, I faced down six Uchiha policemen and Danzo for Naruto, even before I learned who his parents were, even though my nose can still only smell the Kyuubi, because I knew that no child should've been found the way he was." She would've gladly accepted her life at the brothel all over again to protect Kushina and Kokoro. Just how hard could raising another three year old going to be compared to that?

Fugaku muttered that there had only been _five_ Uchiha, and he at least expected her to accurately count to _ten_.

"And your great-grandmother nearly caused a civil war by removing the entire clan from Konoha, but extreme sacrifices mean nothing compared to a lifetime all the little things, Tsume-san. An unkind word, a belittling comment, a slap to the face. You know where that leads."

Tsume's laugh was bitter. "Yeah, I know. It leads to ruthlessly selling your twelve-year-old great-granddaughter into child prostitution."

Danzo coughed pointedly as Fugaku made a choking noise. " _That_ S-rank secret does _not_ have an expiration date." Then he pointed a stern finger at Fugaku. "You and your partner will promptly forget that was ever said."

Fugaku glowered, offended. "I _always_ try to forget everything that Tsume-san says."

"Shut up, Pencil-Dick. But you're right. Not you," she told Danzo, ignoring the dark look he gave her, "but the Hokage. It's the little things to a child – like food, clothing, shelter, security, comfort, love. All of which was denied to him before he came to my kennels. I know that Naruto has a much better chance getting that from me than from the orphanage – hell, Fugaku with his jail cells would be better than the orphanage."

They ignored Fugaku's grumble of how he'd never lock any three year old deviant up in his jails, no matter _what_ the deviant hosted. Tsume decided to press her advantage.

  
Last year, before adopting Kabuto, when her father and brother were out of town for a lengthy mission, Tsume desperately hauled all of her ledgers, checkbooks, and bank statements for the Inuzuka and Hatake clans over to Mikoto's kitchen. Tsume's long-standing feud with numbers didn't improve when money was at stake or taxes to the Fire Daimyo were due so he could continue paying for his _laundry services_ (oh, dear Kushina-chan, the memory of your math lives on!), and she was desperate for any help that she could get. Before Mikoto could assist, Sasuke and Kiba started to fuss, making it impossible for Tsume to concentrate on organizing her receipts while Mikoto was baking fresh bread. This required immediate attention from their mothers.

In the two hours in which she and Mikoto sorted, fed, read stories, staged an historical battle between Uchiha Madara and the South Seas Slavers (conveniently leaving out the part played by a mostly-naked Inuzuka Natsumi or any drinking the blood of enemies) with judicious use of sock puppets, before successfully putting their squabbling toddlers down for a nap, Fugaku and Itachi had snuck into the kitchen and straightened out Tsume's books without saying a word to her.

Tsume resented them just on principle for having greater mathematical understanding than her – especially when Fugaku's nearly-eight year old son was way better at tax codes then a twenty-six year old Tsume, and also had also somehow managed to color coordinate and chronicle her receipts – but she had also been exceedingly grateful to learn that she didn't owe as much taxes as she thought, thereby saving her from the fate of dumpster-diving for survival for the next year. So she knew that there was some shred of decency in Fugaku that could be used to Naruto's advantage, even if Mikoto wasn't around to coax the shred of decency to light.

"And about me becoming like Grandmother – I think I'm removed enough now from that time when you asked me. My heart is still healing, but there will always be room for one more unwanted person, one more misfit in need of a home – especially _this_ child." Fugaku's scent spiked with sorrow; Yahiko's only grew in confusion. Hiruzen and Danzo's scents were unchanged. "Besides," she added as an ingenious thought struck her, "foxes are from the canine family, so that makes Naruto a puppy, and everyone knows that I'm _all_ about puppies."

Fugaku snorted, his expression a mixture of disbelief and expectation. "Always back to the damn dogs."

"And besides _that_ , the nine tails is only one tail short of ten tails." And well did Hiruzen and Danzo know of Tsume's unnatural fondness for legendary ten-tailed demons and horses. So did Fugaku, as he winced in memory of Tsume hitching Juubi up to their wagon and insisting on bringing him along on for their joint mission – and he couldn't complain, because the other horses were still recovering from Mikoto accidentally flambéing them. "So, was that the one other thing, Hokage-sama?"

Hiruzen glanced at Danzo, and then sighed. He shifted nervously in his chair. "It's just that Naruto does have a surviving godfather…"

"Who is _not_ around," Danzo cut in, his expression firm and his scent rigid with barely-suppressed irritation. His entire spine went stiff as his hand curled into a fist. "And when he is around, it's not due to any moral sense of obligation or responsibility. In fact, morals are so distant that they belong in an entirely different country that wouldn't have the poor taste to issue a passport to the man."

"Well, it's not exactly like he could raise an infant on the road—"

"Exactly, Hiruzen. Which is why such consideration shouldn't even enter into this discussion."

"He hasn't forfeited either," Hiruzen hastily added as Danzo gulped a large mouthful of cream-tea to cover up how much he wanted to snarl at the Hokage. Yahiko and Fugaku's eyes flickered from War Hawk to God of Shinobi and back again, as if watching a particularly fascinating chuunin tournament match. Hiruzen was cheerfully optimistic to Danzo's barely restrained turbulence. "And while I believe he wouldn't have any misgivings with Tsume's involvement, I'm sure that he would wish to remain Naruto's godfather."

"He should've thought of that _before_ he went gallivanting across the countryside. He isn't the only shinobi who's lost loved ones."

Tsume cleared her throat as she glanced quickly to her kitchen door. "Who're you talking about? I'll be glad to arm-wrestle him for Naruto."

"You'd lose," Danzo said, his voice abrupt with irritation. "But besides that, for all the occasions you've lost your kids at the market, you're still a more responsible parental figure than _Jiraiya_."

Tsume had a sudden vision of Jiraiya's back as he crouched at a knothole in the fence surrounding the women's side of the hot springs. Crouched beside Jiraiya was an imitating blond figure, his face also pressed against the wood. "Okay, maybe the arm-wrestling wouldn't work out, but I could always seduce him into saying yes!" She had a seal she could use, after all, and she had yet to see how it would work against Jiraiya.

Hiruzen pinched the bridge of his nose as Danzo silently glared at her. "Please don't. I think a simple, polite request will suffice."

Tsume shrugged. "Okay. I suppose I should send it through a secure route, though." She nipped her thumb bloody, flashed through the summoning seals, and then crouched down to slap the palm of her hand against the tile floor. When the poof of chakra dispersed, a small cinnamon-colored bear sat before her. Well, smallish - it was about the size of her dining room table, but definitely small for a bear summon. It looked around for a moment in dizzy confusion, and then grinned up at Tsume as she straightened upward.

"Hi!" Tomorokoshi stood on his hind feet and rested his paws against her shoulders. He sniffed her hair. "Are you going to come and play with us in the clover field? Oh, it's cold outside. You should definitely come play with me where it's warm. Nagaimo and I found another honeybee nest that we can't reach."

"Not today, Tomo-kun. I need you to send a message to Jiraiya-san."

"Oh! A message. Yes, I can do a message!" Tomorokoshi sat down and looked very solemn. "I have put on my Listening Ears."

"Tell that pervert that I've deemed him unsuitable to raise a potted cactus, much less a toddler, and am adopting Naruto. If he has a problem with it, he can talk to my ass because my head ain't listening anymore."

Danzo peered into his teacup, as if expecting that someone might've laced it when he wasn't looking. Hiruzen muttered, "I always forget the Inuzuka have their own standards for what constitutes as polite."

Tomorokoshi stared at Tsume. "I think you mean your hand, not your ass."

"No, I meant my ass. I got my hands full with all these puppies now. Listening ears, out."

"Okay then. I'll tell Pervert-san that he's an ass for raising a potted cactus instead of a toddler, so you're doing it instead."

Tsume opened her mouth to correct the bear, and then thought otherwise. "Eh, you know what? I deem that close enough. Thanks!" Tomorokoshi disappeared in a puff, just as Tsume turned all of her attention towards her kitchen door.

"We're about to be interrupted." With her attention turned towards the newcomers soon to enter, the Uchiha, Hiruzen, and Danzo also turned towards the door. After two breaths, it swung open.

"Oh, good morning," Yamato said as he paused in the entrance. The bags under his eyes were even more prominent than usual. "Are there enough raisin muffins for two more people?" He glanced over his shoulder, and then with an indignant, "Hey!" shunshinned across the yard so quickly that a puff of fluffy snow mixed with the haze of chakra followed in his wake. All the puppies surged forward in slobbery greeting. Tsume swept Naruto and Kiba off the counter and onto Hiruzen's lap.

"Yamato!" Tsume cried, her arms open wide in greeting to her second foster son. She felt giddy in her relief as she stepped outside, completely ignoring the cold snow that buried her bare feet. "And darling, where've you been? Come in, both of you!" She darted across the yard to where Yamato had pinned a person who was swathed in familiar layers of filthy, stinking rags. Tsume's voice dropped into a low whisper as she pushed the puppies aside with her feet and grabbed the stick-thin arm that swung free of Yamato's grasp. "Where was he yesterday? I looked all over for him when the snow started, but he wasn't anywhere around his usually haunts and he kept evading me and disappearing whenever I got close, and then I got distracted because Aunt Natsumi went out for roasted chestnuts and was hopelessly lost when the blizzard struck in full force." It would've been a lot easier if he hadn't decided to channel nature chakra to hide from Tsume.

Yamato shrugged, breathless from the struggle. The other man whimpered and babbled nonsensical syllables in a broken whisper, his voice warped from long-ago screaming until he shredded and scarred his vocal cords. He squatted in the snow, legs tucked close to make himself that much more difficult to lift. Despite the garbled speech and being brutally underweight, he easily swept Yamato off his feet with a twist and shove with one arm.

Yamato rolled over and snagged a leg. Before Yamato could get kicked in the teeth, Danzo was there, a heavy hand gently resting atop the greasy, thin white hair. "You fumbling buffoon, are you _trying_ to give Tsume-chan a cold?" he asked, voice free from its usual harsh edge. The flailing struggle ceased. "She's standing barefooted in the snow, and you know that's not good for her. What would Hidarime say if she knew you got her baby sister sick?"

Tsume ignored the punch to her heart – Danzo was always a lot more skilled, a lot more willing to emotionally manipulate friends and family. She didn't have the heart (or lack thereof) to be like Danzo, not when it came to the father of her heart.

The babbling shifted, the nonsensical syllables jutting against each other and becoming more alike until they took the form of a single word: "sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry…"  
"It's okay, darling," Tsume said, aware that the smile she wore was strained. She lightly stroked his bony hand, trying to indicate without making any sudden movement that she was unarmed. Her eyes watered, but that was more from the fact that the man smelled of feces and rotten garbage – he had been dumpster-diving and rolling in sewage again.  
Between the three of them, they managed to coax their companion through the open kitchen door with gentle but firm tugging. Yamato talked, his voice rising and falling in a cantor that was almost hypnotic. "He actually came and followed me around on my patrol last night, and even let me dress him up in my extra cloak and gloves. But he lost them somewhere early this morning, so now I need to replace the cloak and gloves."

"Really?" Tsume laughed and stoked the gaunt, bearded cheek. "I'm so proud of you, darling! You never hang with Yamato-san!" Or willingly let _anyone_ bundle him up in extra clothes, even when it was cold. This darling man had the alarming habit of giving all his spare clothes to Tsume with the single-minded desperation of a father trying to cover up his naked daughter, no matter how many layers Tsume might be wearing at the time or how much she protested and tried to give the clothes back.

A gust of wind slammed the kitchen door shut after the last of the puppies entered. The bam of the closing door sent Hatake Sakumo scrambling away from them, limbs trembling, like a demented spider. He frantically circled the kitchen floor, clawing at the wall with twisted hands, the fingernails long and jagged on both hands, and his right hand curled into a twisted, scarred claw. He pawed helplessly once at the window, and then stumbled away from it when he realized that his back was exposed to others.  
Sakumo eventually crouched in the back corner with his arms wrapped over his head as he rocked back and forth, whimpering, unable to bring himself to attack old allies and friends to escape the confinement of Tsume's cheerful kitchen. He snuck occasional glances of horror at the two frightened toddlers that clutched at Hiruzen. Tsume was quick in gathering the eleven curious puppies and shoving them into the pantry before quietly shutting the door. She winced as the door knob clicked.

"Um." Fugaku cleared his throat. He then elbowed Yahiko and made a sharp cutting motion with his hands towards Yahiko's Sharingan eyes. Yahiko followed Fugaku's example and deactivated the Sharingan. "Tsume-san," for once, Pencil-Dick's voice was respectful as he addressed her, "is there anything we can do to help Sakumo-senpai?"

Tsume eyed Yamato, who was peeling off outer layers that were dirty and stained – most likely due to the struggle to bring Sakumo from Yamato's previous post to her compound. "You stink," she told her second foster-son.

Yamato gave her a droll look. "Yes, and?"

The Senju DNA twisted Yamato's scent so that it smelled like rotted wood and swamp mud, so Yamato had always been aware that he smelled worse than most people. It hadn't helped that Tsume had latched onto him in the height of her pregnancy with Hana, when her olfaction had been the most sensitive. But he also currently stank of agitation, exhaustion, leftover garbage, and stale sweat – scents that seemed to easily permeated past the Kyuubi's – Tsume wondered if it was the Senju DNA that allowed such. It must've been a very long night with his attention torn between watching someone who had long ago lost his wits, and doing patrol outside Konoha's walls.

  
"You should take a bath."

Yamato almost pouted. He wasn't very good at sulking and pouting – not like Kakashi, who managed to perfect it by the time he was three so he could twist Tsume around his little finger – but he still made valiant attempts at it. "And I suppose I won't be the only person in the sento." He glanced over at Sakumo, and sighed. He slumped wearily, and Tsume felt awful. "It's time for the monthly spit-and-shine, isn't it?"

"Well, he's not due until next week, but he may be harder to catch next time. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to check for any signs of frostbite." Tsume turned wide, begging eyes toward Danzo, who stood unmoving beside Yamato. She folded her hands in supplication. "Would you help?"

He glared at her as he pulled her fluffy pink bathrobe tighter around himself, as if shielding himself from spit-and-shine responsibility. "And what are you going to be doing?"

"Pencil-Dick. Naruto, and I have to go to the orphanage to get Naruto's stuff and sign the adoption papers. You know where I keep Sakumo's care kit, _and_ you know the routine – get mini Pencil-Dick to help hold Sakumo down while Yamato trims his toenails. If things go really bad, you can bother Aunt Natsumi after ten. But only after ten. But don't forget to bring coffee if it's between ten and eleven – strong tea doesn't cut it anymore. I've already got the coffee pot rigged." Tsume pointed at the machine. It had been an extravagant splurge, but well worth it. Tsume didn't so much care for the flavor of coffee, but adored its scent. "Just flip it on to brew."

Yahiko looked offended at his newly acquired nickname, as Danzo snorted. "I do not require assistance from anyone. Sakumo has always been better at obeying me than you. I had him well-trained before he even met your sister."

Sakumo also made it a hobby to be contrary with Danzo and probably did so because it was one of the few things that still amused him immensely, but Tsume was wise enough not to remind Danzo of this. "How about you?" She turned to the Hokage, who had Kiba and Naruto perfectly balanced in his lap. "Are you coming with us, staying, or do you have to go to the tower?"

"I think I'll just stay here if you don't mind. It's warm, you have marvelous raisin muffins, and I can look after Kiba while Danzo and Uchiha-san assist Sakumo-san with his hygiene and health. And someone needs to remain to distract Kakashi if he awakes before Sakumo's grooming is completed."

Oh, gosh. She had forgotten that Kakashi was still asleep in her bed. It was very rare to have father and son together beneath her roof, even if they were on separate floors. Kakashi still couldn't tolerate seeing his father in such a horrid condition, although he seemed to have gotten over most of the shame and embarrassment of sharing genetic material ( _mostly_ – he still wore his mask to disguise the fact that he was related to Sakumo – Tsume personally thought that Kakashi would have better luck if he just covered his hair). "Thank you so much for your help, Hokage-sama."

"Besides, I'm sure that my office is still freezing cold. Maybe I'll have Yamato here fetch the most important paperwork, and I'll work on it at your kitchen table." Hiruzen shrugged. "I'm not worried about the security clearance of the people visiting this home."

Tsume bundled Naruto up in one of Kiba's parkas, covered his bandaged feet with two pairs of wool socks and Kiba's spare boots, and then covered his dandelion fluff with a bright orange knit hat. "Come on, Pencil-Dick," she told Fugaku as she threw on a wool jacket and a pair of gloves. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get back."

  
Fugaku cast one look at Sakumo as they left the bright kitchen with Naruto still holding his ramen as Tsume balanced him on her hip. The sun was out, but the air was still stark and cold, and their breath fogged the air. Konoha gleamed white in the fresh daylight, barely disturbed since most people opted to stay home. "Show me," Fugaku said as he followed Tsume off the compound. "Show me the path that this child took to your kennels."

Tsume eyed him over the ridiculously fluffy pompom on top of Naruto's hat. "Okay." She followed Naruto's scent, easily detected and nearly frozen in place with the bloody footprints he left, through the multiple streets and byways. Three blocks away from the kennels, she found the cause of Naruto's bloody feet. "Isn't it illegal to litter?" she asked, brushing the broken particles from the sake jar out of their path. She pushed the killing intent down so it wouldn't bother Naruto.

Fugaku's brow was knitted with a frown. "Indeed."

Tsume's grip tightened on Naruto. He squirmed uncomfortably. "It's also illegal to throw them at people, right?"

"That would be pure speculation on your part."

"Oh, trust me, the speculation is as accurate as Oyubi in the middle of an orchid convention." Fugaku shuddered at the passing mention of the Itty Bitty Orchid Committee. "Besides, the person who threw it left his scent on the bottle. It still stinks of rage and fear."

Fugaku shook his head, slowly. "One thing at a time, Tsume. The sooner we can get the child out of the cold, the better for his health."

"Not child." Tsume rested the palm of her hand on Fugaku's sleeve as she mentally filed away the scent of the person and ideas of how to best exact justice. "It's okay to say his name. It's Naruto. U-zu-ma-ki Na-ru-to. Just like Uzumaki Kushina. You remember Kushina-chan, don't you?"

Fugaku studied her for a moment with a hint of resentment in his eyes and scent. "Someone who likes to give disrespectful nicknames to people has no place in correcting another person's diminutives." Fugaku cleared his throat and looked away, scent shifting into shame. "After this, we'll go directly to the Assistant Head of Internal Affairs and the Hokage. Clearly, I cannot trust the reports of my men." He shot her another glance, this one angry and resentful.

Tsume didn't know why he was so upset with her, unless he was actually just upset about having to involve Internal Affairs, which was never the same since Kagami had to find a replacement. The relationship between Tsume and Fugaku was built upon intense antagonism, shared insults, a really lousy one-night stand when Tsume was a hormonal teenager with all the common sense of a rock, and the unspoken understanding that they still had each other's backs when they needed help. Or at least was how she defined their relationship. She didn't know why Fugaku would've helped her with her taxes last year otherwise, unless it was to get rid of her as soon as possible so Mikoto could finish her marvelous bread. "Thank you."

Once, years ago, they got along great in the aftermath of the Third Shinobi War, acting as married decoys to take out ambushers on a supplies line because Mikoto's pregnancy destabilized her chakra control, and the horses just didn't like getting immolated. The affectionate bickering came naturally between them, and Tsume enjoyed doting upon Itachi and Shisui. Tsume figured that anyone who had her back in the middle of hostile territory ought to still have her back in good ol' Konoha, even if their misadventures were four years ago.

Fugaku's laugh was hollow as he led the way to the orphanage, past the training fields, and carefully skirting around the outer edge of the Nara Forest. Juubi still patrolled the Forest, protecting the deer like he was their stag-king, unwilling to drop dead because he had the blood of gods (okay, horse summons, which was as close a minor god if any creature could be) running through his veins. "Don't thank me yet, Tsume-san. You may have unwittingly opened a can of worms last night."

"Well then." Tsume shifted Naruto to her other hip. She took Fugaku's arm into her own and tugged him forward, flashing as bright a smile as she could muster. "Let's go fishing, Fugaku-san."

* * *

**additional author's notes** : I love Sakumo too much to kill him off, not after the Fourth Hokage had to kick the bucket. So, instead, I, uh, made him a broken shadow of what he once was...? It's true, you know, about how you always hurt the ones you love.

That being said, I have some bonus material! Since this all doesn't show up in the Beta Years (which probably won't be seen for, oh, another six months), I have to clarify the reference to the Itty Bitty Orchid Committee, because a person just can't namedrop _that_ without any context. The Beta Years basically refer to Tsume's stint undercover in a circus, with some other Konoha nin, when she was fourteen years old. One thing that I adore about _Naruto_ is how whimsically adorable and funny it can be. (Well, I think of the comedy at whimsically adorable.) So every now and again, some of that silliness pokes through in the story, because that's also real life - like when you exiting the grocery store to the piped-in tune of Darth Vader's theme song, and just as the automatic doors swish open, a gigantic gust of hair makes your long skirt billow like as cape. :D Even ninjas can enjoy random bits of silliness. In hindsight.

o-o-o

o-o-o-o

o-o-o-o-o

Kagami was already waiting in Tsume's kitchen when she hurried across town to her compound. He was scratching San behind her ears while Tsume's knapsack, stuffed with a few extra traditional leather clothes, the leather poncho, some regular civilian clothes and underwear, a first aid kit, and her standard camp kit all sealed in a scroll, rested at his feet. Oyubi, looking half-ready to fall asleep, was also at the kitchen table. From the odor of it, Kagami had done most of her packing. Well, if any random guy was going to go roaming through her underwear drawer, she was comfortable with it being Uchiha Kagami. (He had also packed Mikoto's bag, which rested next to hers, so she figured he knew what was necessary for a long-term mission.)

"So, uh," Tsume looked between them. "Did you have a chance yet to talk to Oyubi?" she asked Kagami.

Oyubi made a sour face. She was never polite when she was exhausted. "I already know about my parents and the wedding that Mikoto is planning. Apparently, the colors are supposed to be orchid and cream." She wrinkled her nose, and not from the strong scent of coffee as she poured a cup for Tsume. "I don't even know what color orchid is. Blue? Yellow with brown spots? Swan shapes or hairy monkeys from the moon? Can shapes even be a color? Orchids come in an awful lot of colors." And Oyubi would know – she had to do a stint as a guard at the Annual Orchid Convention last year to make sure that no one sabotaged anyone else's plants. It paid quite handsomely and required very little physical strain - perfect for Oyubi, who had been recovering from a compound femur fracture and was on a month-long stroke watch by her medic.

It turned out that in the competitive world of orchids, people were cutthroat. Several throats, in fact. And Oyubi was only supposed to guard the prized vampire orchard. (Oyubi had been solemnly warned by Yamanaka Inoichi against ever getting involved with the International Dahlia League. When Tsume had asked him, Inoichi had twitched and said that the First Rule of the International Dahlia League was that you Didn't Speak About the International Dahlia League. Tsume was a month shy of being fourteen years old when she learned that the horticultural world of competition was even more shady than the shinobi world of, well, everything else.)

Fugaku was brought in to investigate claims of theft when various judges refused to just take Oyubi's word on who the thieves – and murderers – were because odor alone wasn't acceptable proof in the court of law, or with the Itty Bitty Orchid Committee. Fugaku had grumbled nearly as much as Oyubi, both of them bonding over their frustration with flower judges and getting quite drunk off of Tsume's attempt at homemade dandelion wine. Apparently, Uchiha Police also didn't realize that the world of orchids was Serious Business. Not only did they all bond (very awkwardly), but Tsume learned that Fugaku and Oyubi both made horrible, maudlin drunks, and Uchiha Mikoto was awesome to hang out with. The investigation wound up uncovering an international smuggling ring of ultra-rare orchids, which not only implicated multiple foreign dignitaries, but also caused the collapse of at least two nations – Here and There, which were very small nations, so no one in Konoha cared too badly – and a small war that lasted about six days between the Lands of Hither and Yon.

It still ranked as one of the most bizarre missions anyone had ever had to do in the history of Konohagakure. Danzo later reported that the Hokage wound up classifying it an S-rank secret just for the embarrassment factor.

Kagami didn't stop scratching behind San's ears. "It's a vibrant purple that borders on pink. It's like magenta, but not as bright."

Oyubi eyed Kagami as she stole a sip of Tsume's coffee. "Would you believe me if I think it's strange that you should know what the color orchid is? And why, of all things, you would focus on that part of my rant?"

"Not at all. Mikoto-chan and her mother were undecided between orchid and cream, or midnight blue and silver, and I had to cast the tiebreaking vote. I personally feel that the orchid and cream are most complimentary with our skin colors. However, discussion of wedding colors is not why I'm here, Oyubi-san."

"Of course not. You wouldn't be here at…" Oyubi double-checked her watch, "the ungodly hours in the morning meant for nothing but sleep, sex, assassinations and clandestine meetings between Clan Head and Head of Internal Affairs for no reason. Wedding colors are best discussed in the afternoon."


	25. Delta Years - Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My husband managed to fix the issues with my computer. All is well. Yay!

Tsume had seen many a dumpster over the years since Sakumo lost his sanity, failed a mission, and fought Uchiha Madara to the near-death, although not necessarily all in that order. The Hatake clan, after all, never did anything by half – even their failures were as spectacular as their successes. She was disturbingly familiar with the various insides and outsides of dumpsters, which alleys were cleaner than others, which dumpsters likelier had better food and which ones had clothing that were still mostly intact and blood-free (an unfortunately uncommon commodity in a Hidden Village’s garbage). Admittedly, Tsume wasn’t quite the dumpster connoisseur that Sakumo probably was, but she was certain that she had seen cleaner, more respectable dumpsters than the orphanage. Which reminded her that she needed to visit certain shopkeepers and pay them for putting out decent food on their back steps so Sakumo could eat fresh, unspoiled food.

Then she hoped the adoption fees for Naruto weren’t too high. Danzo had given her Kabuto for free, thanks to some creative pulling of strings and judicious underhanded politics that she did her best not to think of. Maybe she could arrange payments with the Hokage, this time. Hogake-sama knew she was good for extended credit…

“I’ve seen worse,” Fugaku said, glancing around with an unchanging, flat expression on his face. The paint on the walls was peeling; the window jams were crooked and warped, with light and cold air filtering through the cracked wood. The floors creaked and groaned loudly as they walked through the mudroom and entered the main living area – a large open floor space with minimal furniture and a number of half-broken, well-worn toys scattered everywhere. There were a few children who watched them from where they were seated in a corner, sharing a blanket and huddled together for warmth. The fireplace was devoid of ash or coals.

“I’ve seen better,” Tsume countered, circling the room. “And smelled better, too.” Death hung heavily in the air – not the death of violence and spilt blood, but the death of illness and old age. The scent was a week old and mostly undisturbed, barely detectable beneath the heavy stench of the Kyuubi that filtered through everything. Naruto clutched her arms and whimpered as he buried his face against her breast, so she patted his bottom. “You’re safe, kid. Mama will never let you go.”

At those words, the other children seemed to shrink down in their shared blanket. Tsume’s heart shrank with them as their scent of hope curdled.

Fugaku opened a nearby empty room. “I wonder where the director is,” he said, tapping his chin in thought. “This place looked much better when Nono was running it, and that was even before the Council increased the budget for the orphanage.”

Tsume did her best to forget that she knew anything about Nono and the orphanage. Another failing on her part – she had been too busy trying to put back together the shattered child that Danzo had brought her last year to consider if Orochimaru may have somehow effected anyone else at the orphanage, despite being run out of Konoha about four years ago. She pointed at the empty fireplace. “Does _that_ look like the budget got increased?” She swooped in on the children, who huddled deeper beneath the blanket. “Where’s the adult around here?” she asked them. She crouched down to their level, to appear less intimidating, and plastered a welcoming smile on her face.

“Asleep.” The oldest, a six year old boy dark in hair and eyes but pasty white of skin, answered with a shifty glance to the side. His body language was closed and wary, like a wild animal that couldn’t quite tell if it was being cornered or herded to its doom. His companions were a girl who seemed to be about four years old, and a frightfully still two year old.

“Who’s been in charge in the mean time?”

The boy didn’t meet Tsume’s eyes. He rocked slightly. “We’ve been taking care of ourselves.”

Tsume straightened and shared a puzzled look with Fugaku as he came to her side. “Why aren’t any of you in school?”

He shrugged, emotional scents as flat as his expression, and his eyes flickered to Naruto. “Because we’ve been tainted by the jinchuuriki. That’s what you adults say.”

Tsume kicked Fugaku in the shin as subtly as she could when she smelled the spike of his adrenaline. The kick redirected his focus onto her. “Go light a fire there with one of your grand fireball thingies.”

Fugaku stared at her, his face flushed red and his eyes flashing with Sharingan. “Fireball… _thingies?_ ” His voice was strangled. The Chief of Police was never happy to witness a severe infraction of the Hokage’s decrees, especially in regards to Konoha’s jinchuuriki. Tsume kicked Fugaku in the shin, this time not bothering to hide it from the children.

“Oops. My muscles cramped because it’s so cold in here, Pencil… Uchiha-san. And I’m sure these young children are also cold.”

The child’s lips turned up in a shape of a smile, but Tsume could see that it was nothing more than muscles in motions. His emotional scents were flat and distant. “It’s okay. When the Kyuubi eats us, the fires of hell will keep us warmer than the Shinigami’s tummy.” After a moment, he added, “I think I’d prefer being eaten by the Shinigami. Naruto spills food everywhere and isn’t very good at chewing.”

“That’s not true!” Tsume snapped. She dropped to her knees and threw an arm around the boy, hugging him close. He carefully leaned back to avoid touching Naruto. “Come on, kid, we’re all about fire here in Konoha. Our Will is our fire – it’s our passion and our way of life, so there’s nothing wrong with an eternity of that, right? Have you seen how cold it is, out there? So what’s your name, kid?”

“Sai.”

“Well, Sai, those idiots who told you that the fires of hell will warm you up? The same ones who told you about the jinchuuriki?” Tsume ignored the feeling of Sharingan eyes boring a hole in the back of her skull as Fugaku broke up a wooden chair to toss the remains into the fireplace. “I can guess what they said – that the Kyuubi is evil and bad and violent and all that crap, right?” When Sai nodded after what appeared to be lengthy mental debate with himself, she said, “Ignore them. Such people will say anything to make you feel bad. There’s no taint on you, or Naruto, or anyone else living in this building.”

“The Kyuubi killed all the good shinobi, and then he comes along at night to eat bad children. He came three years ago and ate my parents.”

“Nonsense! There’s lots of good shinobi still around, like me and the Hokage. And Uchiha-san, here. Besides, the Kyuubi only eats ramen!” Tsume grinned to cover up her desperation to distract everyone, and ruffled Sai’s hair. “See, the Fourth Hokage really liked this lady, Kushina-chan, and she really liked ramen. So, when the Kyuubi came to eat all the ramen, Kushina-chan was very, very sad. Mooncalf declared that he would protect the ramen and win back Kushina-chan’s heart! He got rid of the Kyuubi, _and_ saved Ichiraku Ramen at the same time!” Tsume was sure, somewhere in the afterlife, Minato would forgive her for this latest rendition of his reputation.

Mooncalf eventually forgave her for the whole Yellow Flasher bit, after all…

“I like ramen!” Naruto declared, eager to do his own part in making things better. He held his squashed cup ramen out to Sai as a token of friendship.

Fugaku choked halfway through a grand fireball thingie. He glared over his shoulder at Tsume as he winced and clutched his throat. “I seem to remember an entirely different version of history. And a _lot_ more dead people.”

Tsume flapped her hand dismissively at Fugaku, and did her best not to think of how many clanswomen she had to scoop up in buckets after the Kyuubi went on its rampage. “Semantics. Next, you’ll be telling me that the Sage of the Six Paths didn’t seal the Juubi inside of himself to impress a woman.”

“I’m pretty sure he did that to save the world from the Juubi’s destruction, actually. What does impressing a woman have to do with it?”

“Duh, because _someone_ had to get pregnant and give birth to his sons. Did you ever consider the fact that the Sage wasn’t exactly an amoeba? Oh, I guess I never did tell you the family legend. Maybe I told it to Mikoto? And why isn’t the fire lit yet?”

Fugaku channeled some of his anger and irritation into successfully starting a fire in the fireplace. The fire crackled and popped, warm and inviting. He stared at the leaping flames as Tsume ushered the children closer. “The orphanage director is a dead man,” he muttered.

“Oh, he most certainly is dead,” Tsume declared. She ignored the surprised look Fugaku gave her. She gathered the children into a quick group hug. “We’re going to get the others, so just wait here until then, okay? I promise that we’ll be right back.” She brushed past Fugaku before he could say anything and followed her nose to the second floor, bringing along Naruto. The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it open with a bump of her hip. The rusty hinges groaned in protest. The bare floor also groaned beneath Tsume’s feet as she strode across the bare room and poked the still lump that lay unmoving beneath the layers of bedding. “Maybe we should get someone to run the orphanage who isn’t old enough to die in his sleep,” Tsume said. “This one’s been gone for a week.” It wasn’t very obvious to non-Inuzuka, though, since the cold had slowed the rate of decay and minimized the odor of death.

Fugaku glared at the lump, seemingly offended that it hadn’t turned in a two weeks’ notice to the Uchiha Police Department or the Clan Council before dropping dead so a replacement could be found. “That would explain why the children are without adult supervision and why _that one_ was hungry enough to eat your dog’s food when he finally found it.”

“Hold on.” Tsume jabbed her finger against Fugaku’s chest. “First of all, my mush is awesome. Second of all, if your men or ANBU were supposedly monitoring Naruto in the building, why didn’t _they_ notice the lack of general adult supervision?”

Fugaku made an impatient noise as he spun around on his heel and stalked out of the bedroom. “That’s why this is getting turned over to Internal Affairs.” His resentful anger was barely distinguishable beneath the stench of decay and Kyuubi. Tsume realized that Fugaku’s anger and resentment weren’t necessarily aimed _at her_ , but more at the situation. The Assistant Head of Internal Affairs was an even bigger asshole than Fugaku, and that wasn’t a label Tsume gave away lightly. “How many children are currently present?”

Tsume sniffed when she joined him in the hallway. She had to drastically increase the chakra at her nose. “Fourteen. All young. They’re hungry and cold.”

Fugaku rubbed his forehead in silence as he contemplated their surroundings. “I need to think for a moment. Let’s get Naruto’s personal possessions first before I make any decisions.”

Tsume shrugged, shifted Naruto to her other hip, and then led Fugaku to the third floor. They passed a group of seven more children, who had made an igloo of books from the library and filled it with blankets and pillows to keep warm. Fugaku, his police badge prominent on his chest, gently ordered the children to grab a change of their warmest clothes and congregate in the main living area. 

“Congregate?” Tsume asked when the children were out of earshot. “Are they really going to know what that word means?”

Fugaku gave Tsume a pointed look. “A person is never too young to expand their vocabulary.”

Naruto’s room was a place where the youngest children were apparently crammed into, and was more of a large closet than an actual room. It contained three cribs crowded side by side that the babies on the first floor used, a rickety set of drawers, and a small basket for dirty clothes. It gave the appearance of being used by the youngest, but the Kyuubi’s scent was too prominent for it to also not be Naruto’s primary bedroom.

Tsume nudged the loose boards where the wall met the low-hanging eaves. The board swung sideways on its nail. When Tsume knelt on the bare floor, Naruto clung harder, nails digging into her skin. Tsume pressed her cheek against his dandelion fluff-for-hair and murmured words of love and comfort as she pushed the board aside and pawed around in crawl space. She pulled a threadbare blanket out of the dark depths and stared at it for a long moment, too stunned from the implications to think.

Tsume reached into the dark again, and pulled out a well-worn stuffed frog. It was missing one of the glass eyes that Kushina had worried her unborn baby might accidentally swallow. Mikoto had given it to Kushina at the surprise baby shower that Tsume and Kokoro threw, just a month before the Kyuubi attacked. Well, Kokoro threw it. Tsume had been anemic and tugging along an IV pole with multiple bags of fluids and piggybacked antibiotics, because healing from self-administered Cesarean was a real _bitch_.

It was the only time that Tsume had seen the frog.

It was also the last time Tsume had seen Kushina alive and surrounded by friends.

The realization that she was holding on to the last memory of Kushina’s past, when Kushina had been _smiling_ and _laughing_ and _alive,_ hit Tsume in the gut. She thought: _this is the Fourth’s living legacy_. The legacy of a man who always chased away that cold, awful void. Minato had always been brimming with so much love and life that it just spilled everywhere, and the void couldn’t help but retreat from it. Guilt churned in her stomach as something punched her in the heart. She felt the _looming_ nothing just behind her left shoulder, as if it leaned forward to swallow her.

She had _promised_ Minato. Minato had been the first to find Tsume in the forest, followed Kuromaru to where she was trying not to bleed to death after cutting Kiba free. She had been delirious with pain and desperation, wondering what would happen to her pups if she died, and Mooncalf had promised to take care of her children as he picked her up and carried her to safety and emergency medical care. Mooncalf already looked out for Kakashi, always trying to be the father that Sakumo should’ve been when he became Kakashi’s jounin sensei, and Tsume had known she could die peacefully with Minato’s promise. In return, Tsume had promised the same to Minato.

“What have I done?” she whispered as her lower lip trembled. Naruto tugged the frog out of her grasp and hugged it close. “F-Fugaku.” Tsume rubbed her stinging eyes. “This is Kushina-chan’s _baby!_ ” She burst into tears and clutched Naruto tightly to her chest. Of all the things her horrible memory had to forget, it was that moment between her and Mooncalf. “I p-promised him! Where was I?”

Fugaku crouched on his heels and patted Tsume’s back awkwardly. “You were very sick at the time, and your memory isn’t exactly the greatest even when you aren’t sick. No one can fault you.” He easily pried Naruto out of her arms and balanced him on one hip.

“But Naruto should’ve been with me, _not_ here, shoved aside in a _hole_! These horrible people didn’t even give him a _bed_!”

“ _No one_ should be here right now.” Fugaku’s voice was dry as he hooked his arm beneath Tsume’s and tugged her to her feet. He dabbed her eyes with the sleeve of his long shirt. “Honestly, you look scary enough without bawling, so stop crying. The children don’t need to see you like this. The caretaker is dead and we’ve got starving, freezing orphans to take care of. This became much bigger than just Naruto.”

Tsume wiped her nose into Fugaku’s sleeve, and ignored the tired look of disgust he gave her. “I know. You’re right. Naruto isn’t the only one in need of a good home. We can’t leave the children here with dead bodies and no heat. And we need to talk to them so they don’t continue to break the Hokage’s decree.”

Naruto reached out and patted Tsume’s arm the same way that Fugaku had patted her back. “It’s okay,” he told her in a soft voice. That made her burst into tears again. Fugaku resigned himself to holding his sleeve out to her.

“Are your hormones…” His voice trailed off for a moment as Tsume scrubbed her face against his sleeve again. He eventually gave up trying to be subtle, since the direct approach always worked best for her. “Are your hormones still off-kilter?”

It wasn’t a fair question since her hormones had stabilized last year, thanks to a mixed progesterone-estrogen implant. That didn’t stop Fugaku of being wary about upsetting Tsume ever since he made her cry two years ago in the marketplace when he refused to let her have the last peach. Mikoto had read him the riot act all the way back to the Uchiha District. “Sort of,” she said, rubbing her eyes and unwilling to give up one of the few advantages she had over him. “But that doesn’t change how much I loved Kushina and Minato.” Kushina had been her second most favorite person in the whole world, and Minato her fourth.

She fretted and fussed as Fugaku led her from the room, down the hall, and to the first floor. He made her wipe her face clean with a handful of snow scooped off a windowsill before they entered the area where all the children were waiting.

She was appalled at the small crowd of dirty faces, hunger gleaming in their eyes like a pack of wild timber wolves she dognapped and dragged along with her from the isolated Island of Claw. There was something a little intimidating about being alone with wolves, on a boat, in the middle of the ocean… Although not nearly as intimidating as Sasori glaring at her while he dangled upside down from a tree. Tsume was actually surprised to have survived such an encounter, even if Sasori owed her his life in the first place. “We should get to them a nice, warm home. My place is too far away right now.” She snagged Fugaku’s arm. “Oh, I know where we can take the children! It’s much closer than my house!”

Fugaku frowned. “I think it’s more appropriate to take them to the Police Station.”

“Don’t be ridiculous - they’re orphans, not criminals, even if they probably feel that they should be locked up on account of what the director told them. Besides,” Tsume dropped her hand and pinched Fugaku where the children couldn’t see, “half of them don’t even have _shoes_ , and they’re starving. You can’t expect them to walk all the way to the station in this cold without even being fed!”

Fugaku tilted his head and looked upward, as if silently begging for supernatural patience. “Fine. That’s it. Since you’re going to take charge no matter what anyone says or does, they’re yours – every one of them, from the hair on their head to the soles of their bare feet. Now, where do you want to lead them, o mighty mama bear?”

oOoOoOo

“I can’t decide if this is the best thing I’ve seen this year so far, or the saddest thing ever.” Natsumi scrutinized the pile of soapy, half-naked men – they were all in fine, masculine shape, although the one at the bottom of the pile needed a month of high-calorie foods, and the one at the top was a little too young for her tastes. Plus, that one _there_ had the Sharingan, and Natsumi never ogled the Uchiha just on principle – _not blatantly_ , at any rate… er, not in the last fifty or so years, at least. (Even Shinzou had admitted that Uchiha Izuna had looked as good as he smelled in the brief time they had known him, though Shinzou spent more time salivating over Madara and Izuna’s mother than any of the Uchiha men. Walking in to find Shinzou while she was going down on his mother had probably soured Madara to the Inuzuka clan for generations to come, and wasn’t that a darling little secret that few people alive knew.)

Sakumo managed to free an arm from Yamato’s grasp and wave it weakly at her from the tile floor of the Inuzuka clan’s sento. “Help! Help!”

Natsumi was momentarily grateful that she didn’t have a sense of smell anymore. She could see that the soap and misapplied water merely smeared the filth and decay, instead of cleansing it from Sakumo’s skin. She hung a sign from the door handle (“ _Keep out! D rank mission in progress! – Tsume)_ before sliding it shut, since the cold air from the outside was making the inside air thick with fog. “Back away, boys. And shut that Sharingan off before I poke out your eyeballs.”

“Told you,” Yamato told Yahiko snidely through his bloody nose.

Yahiko glared with one eye, since the other was blackened and nearly swollen shut.

“Dare we back away?” Hiruzen asked breathlessly, not easing up on the bear hug that kept Sakumo trapped. “And sorry about waking you up. Tsume-san said not to bother you before ten.”

“Wasn’t you who woke me up. The only reason I’m not here to rinse off the culprit’s blood is because he already looked half-dead from his own wounds.” Natsumi yawned and did her best to ignore the tugging exhaustion that made her want to curl up in a corner and go back to sleep. This old age thing was for the birds. She peered over the edge of her wire-rimmed glasses at the bathhouse occupants, and saw fuzzy shapes. She impatiently shoved her glasses further up her nose to bring the world back into clarity.

“Where’s my niece? I thought she was home right now…”

“Off to sign adoption papers,” Danzo said, looking uncomfortable from where he was half-twisted and mostly on top of Sakumo’s legs. He also looked stuck beneath one of Yahiko’s legs, with Yamato lying on top. He rested his head against the tile and took a deep breath.

“Again?” Natsumi thought for a brief moment. “Tell me that she’s at least trying to adopt a girl this time, right?” She really liked that Anko girl, even if Tsume could only take her as a part-time apprentice. There was something about Anko’s bloodthirsty disdain for human dignity that Natsumi appreciated. It reminded her so much of dear, sweet Tobirama…

“No, sorry.” Hiruzen’s smile was disarming. “Another boy.”

Natsumi clicked her tongue in disapproval as she walked over to where Kiba was seated quietly on a stool, out of the way of the tangled pile of manflesh. “I don’t get what she’s thinking sometimes. One daughter, and now _five_ sons? _I’m_ going to start stuffing them in dresses.” Kakashi had been so adorable back in those days. She momentarily contemplated tying ribbons in Kiba’s hair. A soft sakura-pink would contrast nicely against the dark brown.

“It’s Kushina’s son,” Danzo said.

“Who?” It took Natsumi a moment to remember who Kushina was, since it wasn’t a name she had thought of in years. Her memory of Kushina’s face and voice was distant and blurred, with no distinction of color or scent to help mark any clear parameters. After a moment, _jinchuuriki_ popped into her head, and Natsumi felt immensely better about her niece’s latest acquisition. “Oh yeah. Her.” The heir and the hope of the Inuzuka clan always managed to unwittingly wander into the Old Ways. The gods would be pleased. “I guess that’s all right, then. Hold still now, Kiba.”

“Okay, Aunty.”

Natsumi ruthlessly stripped Kiba out of his clothes, and then plopped him naked in front of Sakumo. Kiba squeaked when his bare butt came into contact with the cold tile. “Give him a bath – may as well scrub yourself up too, Sakumo. Set a good example for Tsume’s son.”

The tension melted away from Sakumo’s body as he stared at Kiba. “…’kay,” he mumbled. It took a few moments for the other men to disentangle themselves, their body language stiff and cautious lest Sakumo attempt another getaway – being wet and naked wouldn’t deter him in this cold weather, but Natsumi had a few extra tricks up her sleeves just in case. Sakumo was far too young to be giving her the slip in a room

Sakumo seated himself on a stool and dutifully poured the water over Kiba’s head. When he started scrubbing Kiba with a soapy sponge, Natsumi pointed her fingers at Yamato and snapped them. “Grab the other sponge and start on Sakumo – and don’t roll your eyes at me. We’re lucky we don’t need _sandpaper_ this time.” She yawned again. “Danzo’s only got one working arm, the other guy’s Sharingan might set Sakumo off again, and I want to admire the Hokage in his current state. That only leaves you to do the work.”

Hiruzen risked a glance down the length of his body – his white robes were as see-through as they were wet, plastered against his skin – and then gave Natsumi an exasperated look. “You’re awfully frisky before ten in the morning.”

“I have two arms, and they both work, thank you very much.”

Natsumi ignored Danzo’s grumbles in favor for leering at the Hokage, even though he was almost half a century younger than her. “I may be as old as dirt, but that don’t mean you should bury me six feet under just yet. You’re a widower, I don’t have to feel awful about thinking how delightful it would be to smack your ass. Besides, I’ve always had a thing for the Hokage.” Then Natsumi huffed a sigh, and nudged Yahiko with her foot as his face burned bright red. “Yo, Uchiha, make yourself useful and get the care kit from the kitchen. Tsume keeps it in the top second cupboard, to the right of the kitchen sink.” She crossed her arms and glared at Sakumo’s back. She could count every rib. “Looks like someone’s got worms again.”

Kiba giggled and squirmed as Sakumo washed behind the ears. Sakumo’s shoulders were slouched with ease. “That tickles!” 

Danzo waited until Yahiko left the sento. “Where’s Kakashi now?” he asked as he wrung excess water from Tsume’s bathrobe. Then he sighed and peeled the wet garment off, revealing a bare torso and shoulders that were still strong and muscular despite a left arm that never fully recovered from the Kyuubi-induced wounds.

Natsumi tilted her head to get a better look at Danzo’s torso. It wouldn’t hurt to see if she could visually inspect for any bruising or wounds. She was all about multitasking, after all, and it wasn’t like Tsume and Danzo were _exclusive_. Danzo still enjoyed men, and Tsume used her siren seal liberally. “I convinced him that the God of Shinobi and the War Hawk wrestling with the White Fang in the middle of the snow was a fever-induced hallucination, tucked him in my bed with Nagumi to keep him warm, and then told him I was going to get coffee before I unleashed the gouka inugami upon his immortal soul for disturbing my slumber. Far as I know, he’s still there.” And probably wasn’t going to move until he was absolutely sure that the caffeine had eased Natsumi’s mid-morning homicidal tendencies. “Also, the coffee pot doesn’t work when there isn’t any electricity for it, so I’m stuck waiting on the hot water to work its magic in the press.”

“Ah, that’s good.” Hiruzen removed his pipe from his pocket, sighed as he fit the broken stem to the bowl, and then tucked the pieces back where he found them. “You know, I just knew that Sakumo’s strike to my pocket was deliberate.” He grunted as he sat down beside Danzo, his left knee stiff, making sure to keep his buttocks far from Natsumi’s reach. Natsumi hoped that Danzo would turn his interest in men on the Hokage, just once. She bet there was some unresolved sexual tension between those two.

Danzo’s face relaxed with amusement. “The buffoon knows that Tsume doesn’t like you smoking in her house.”

After Sakumo had thoroughly scrubbed and rinsed a giggling Kiba, and Yamato had thoroughly scrubbed and rinsed Sakumo, the two bathers willingly slipped in the tub. Sakumo kept one arm around Kiba as the child staged an epic battle between a rubber duck and a plastic shark. It also looked like Danzo and Hiruzen’s ongoing relationship as platonic life partners would continue unabated. Natsumi tried to squash her disappointment.

By that time, Yahiko had returned with the care kit. Natsumi set it on one of the stools and flipped the lid open. She handed the sheers and comb to Yahiko. “Cut his hair as short as you can get it. Sakumo, tilt your head back.”

Sakumo obeyed, staring up at the ceiling as he leaned backwards over the edge of the tub. He still kept a grip on Kiba as the plastic shark launched a surprise ambush on the rubber duck. “Woosh!”

Yahiko looked aghast. “You want me to cut his hair in the _bath_?”

“Scandalous, I know, but you _knew_ that when I sexually harassed the Hokage. Don’t worry – Tobirama taught me a jutsu that filters impurities out of the water. Perfect for drinking from suspicious lakes, and cleaning hair out of onsens.” Yahiko still looked offended, so Natsumi kicked him in the ankle to make him move faster. “Better to get hair in the water than let him get lice,” she added cryptically. Sakumo was a lot better at allowing people to cut his hair short than allowing the Aburame clan to delouse him. _That_ was always a B rank mission. “Besides, Inuzuka bathhouse means Inuzuka rules.” Said bathhouse had only been built five years ago, after Sakumo and Tsume managed to get banned from every hot springs and public onsen in Konoha.

With everyone else grooming Sakumo, Natsumi settled herself on another stool and tried not to fall asleep.

“Why does the sign say D rank mission?” Yahiko asked.

“We’ll explain when we’re done,” Danzo said with a sadistic gleam in his eye. “For now, just watch the S rank jounin.” Then Danzo ducked to avoid getting clobbered with the rubber duck.

oOoOoOo

As far as Nara Shikaku was concerned, it was the perfect day. His darling-albeit-high-strung wife, Yoshino, had left early to check on her aging parents, but not before sternly ordering him to stay inside with Shikamaru where it was nice and warm. That meant that he didn’t have to go to the desk to see if there were any available missions, he didn’t have to shovel snow, and he could spend the day napping with his son for some good old father-son bonding. Or at least what qualified as father-son bonding in the Nara household, which was notorious for not being particularly very fast or high-energy off of battle-fields. (Shikake often theorized that their minds burned up so much energy from thinking that there was left little for the body to move. Shikaku was inclined to agree if it meant that he could vegetate in one spot for an indeterminate amount of time.)

It was the perfect day. And he began it in the perfect way, kneeling in the kitchen with his son at their modest little table. He nursed a tea set. Shikamaru wore his bib and pajamas that wouldn’t be changed for the entire day – Shikaku didn’t see the point in making his son get out of the pajamas when they weren’t going to go anywhere, and besides, Shikamaru would just have to get dressed in the pajamas again come bedtime. Shikamaru also nursed a bowl of hot rice porridge, slowly savoring the flavors. Shikaku was delighted to see that his son was shaping up to be a fine Nara.

Shikaku had the day nicely plotted out in his mind. Breakfast first, then a nap afterwards – hard to get up energy on a full stomach, after all. After the nap, they could play some games and eat the bentos that Yoshino had dutifully prepared early that morning. Lunch would be followed by another nap, and then Shikaku could show Shikamaru some chakra exercises that would later increase the toddler’s deftness with manipulating his shadow, and then Shikaku could break out the sake.

Maybe by that time, his two teammates might show up to share in the sake.

It was the perfect day, and he had it planned out with everything in its place, and a place for everything. Nice, neat, organized. The Nara clan was too lackluster to be anal perfectionists like the Hyuuga clan, but thorough planning allowed for getting the most done with the least amount of time and energy.

But the best-laid plans of mice and men often get led astray by the more sinister forces of life and reckless younger siblings. Hence, breakfast was interrupted with a loud banging door and a multitude of children’s voices.

“… so that was the parlor, and this is the kitchen,” his younger sister declared as she marched a gaggle of children, bundled in well-worn clothing and blankets, into his kitchen. Four of the children had rags tied around their feet instead of shoes. “Don’t mind the floors. We’ll take shoes off after we warm up.” Shikaku was used to Tsume bringing strays home – usually not _his_ home – so he wasn’t too surprised to see her. Harsh winter storms easily brought misfortunate children out of the woodwork, which in turn brought out Tsume’s greed for all things orphaned and vaguely cute.

And lo and behold, his sister somehow managed to get ahold of the jinchuuriki, and was holding him with all the possessive fury that he had seen when she first sunk her claws into Yamato. “Now, I want everyone to sit down over there, yes, in that corner. Sai, bring the baby over here, there’s some bottles that Yoshino keeps in the cupboard, and we can warm up some milk. Oh, hi, Shikaku!” He blinked slowly, careful not to freeze or even to move suddenly, lest Tsume misread that as some sort of animal body language that he was about to make a getaway attempt. Which wouldn’t be too far off the truth. “Everyone, this is my older brother, Nara Shikaku, the very gracious host I was just telling you about.”

Tsume and the gaggle of children bowed deeply and profusely thanked Shikaku for his kind generosity and warm house. With their greetings and gratitude appropriately expressed, Tsume went back to having most of the children sit with their backs against the wall as she and the eldest three immediately raided Shikaku’s fridge and cupboards. The children’s cheeks glowed with warmth and hope as they slowly divested themselves of multiple layers of blankets and coats. That one _there_ had the Yamanaka eyes. Most likely he was a bastard borne by a civilian woman who probably died before she could petition formal recognition from the clan.

Shikaku and Shikamaru shared a silent look over their cups of tea.

Uchiha Fugaku hovered on the edges of the kitchen for just a moment, as if reluctant to be mistaken for having any involvement in Tsume’s latest scheme. Shikaku took pity on the stress lines that were deepening on Fugaku’s face, patted the cushion that his wife used whenever she was kneeling at the table, and then pointed at Fugaku.

Fugaku quietly accepted it.

They watched silently for a few more moments as Tsume commandeered supplies and utensils to whip up a fresh batch of rice porridge as her two chosen helpers handed out glasses of milk. When they ran out of glasses, Tsume told Sai to use tea cups. Then they started distributing the pickled plums.

“I don’t want to know what happened. If you tell me,” Shikaku poured Fugaku a cup of tea, “I’m not going to have plausible deniability.”

Fugaku hastily gulped down half the cup, his twitching eyebrows the only indication that the tea probably scalded his mouth and throat. “So, you don’t want to know that when your sister decided to adopt Uzumaki Naruto, she found the orphanage director dead, and _then_ decided to temporarily relocate the orphans to the main Nara house because it was just one training field away from the orphanage, _or_ about how these orphans all know about the Kyuubi because the dead orphanage director broke the Hokage’s decree and told them?”

Shikaku pillowed his head on his arms and glared at Fugaku. “You didn’t listen to a word I said about plausible deniability.”

“On the bright side, Tsume-san decided that the Nara house was far more favorable than the Hyuuga District.”

Shikaku had the distinct feeling that he was on the precipice of being dragged into something incredibly aerobic. If he played his cards just right, he could juggle the responsibility and energy costs onto his old man. Shikake had just complained the other day about being bored. So what if Shikake’s boredom had more to do with the paperwork from running the Konohagakure Hospital than a lack of hobbies? Shikaku wasn’t going to quibble over the small details when it came to redirecting his sister’s energy.

Okay, Shikaku could deal with Tsume adopting another child, even if it was the jinchuuriki. Tsume had an ongoing love affair with ferocious animals that she would affectionately name Juubi – aptly named, considering how _that_ particular horse was _still_ on a rampage in the Nara Forest – so the Kyuubi was virtually a dream come true for his sister. So long as it was just the one child, though. Tsume sometimes forgot the children that she _did_ have, especially when she brought them along for shopping at the market.

It was a bit of a running bet between Shikaku and Shikake to see how long it took Tsume to realize that her children, hungry and bored, had wandered over to the Nara house from the market.

“And, ah, I might’ve-sort’ve-kinda made her temporarily the replacement for the dead orphanage keeper. Theoretically.”

Oh dear. Inuzuka Tsume, collector of adorable and/or adorable creatures orphaned or abandoned, given an entire orphanage all to herself.

As he took a deliberately slow sip of his tea, Shikaku thought of all the different ways he could subtly slip poison into Uchiha Fugaku’s tea without the man noticing. 

“Ah hah! It seems that my sister-in-law was hiding some cookies here. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind offering them up for a good cause. Everyone can have _half_ of a cookie – Fuu, please give this to Shikamaru, thank you. _Half_ a cookie, Lee, not four.”

Tsume would smell the poison before Fugaku could ingest it though. And then she’d give Shikaku a bad time about the poison, and probably also tell his wife. Yoshino would never forgive Shikaku for poisoning a guest (no matter _how_ uninvited said guest actually was) _with her tea._

Shikamaru solemnly accepted the half a cookie from the Yamanaka bastard, and dunked it in his cup.

Shikaku contemplated how much less trouble it would be to simply defect to Ame. It was much further away than Kiri, after all. And it rained up there so much it would be hard even for Tsume’s nose to track him down.

“All right now, dirty dishes stacked in the sink. Hop to it, kids! After we’re done, you’re all going to sit in the living room while Uncle Shikaku reads you _The Tale of the Gutsy Shinobi_ , a grand story written by our very own Jiraiya-sensei, all about this wonderful kid… well, you’ll find out. Uchiha-san and I have to run back to the Hokage.”

The problem of defecting to Ame was that Tsume would still just track Shikaku down and drag him back before he even reached the rainy part, and then he’d have to explain to his wife why he even defected in the first place. Shikake would no doubt lecture him thoroughly for failing to outthink Tsume’s nose. It was just as well. Fugaku looked like he would kill Shikaku if he abandoned the poor man to the whims of his sister and her latest litter of misfits.

Hokage-sama would understand and sympathize, though. And so would Danzo. Well, maybe Danzo wouldn’t _sympathize_ , but he would certainly understand.

“Does Shikamaru-chan want to come along and make some friends with his new cousin? This is Naruto. I’m adopting him today. Naruto, this is your uncle – Shikaku, and his son, your cousin, Shikamaru.” Tsume leaned forward and held Naruto an arm’s reach away from Shikaku. She hovered over the fluffy blond hair with a razor-sharp smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and a hint of fang showing through her lips. The look in her eyes made Shikaku’s insides curl with worry. Naruto clutched a ragged stuffed frog close to his chest and tried to look brave.

“Hi,” said Shikamaru innocently with the wave of his half-eaten cookie. Naruto’s face lit up in a smile at Shikamaru’s friendly greeting.

Shikaku hesitated for a brief moment, and then patted Naruto on his head. He pushed back the fear – not for the jinchuuriki, as he had seen the seal the night it was created and knew that the jail of the Kyuubi would hold steady and true – but for his sister, whose self-esteem was not exactly the most healthy or vigorous for all that she was Inuzuka through and through. Between her hobby of antagonizing the Uchiha, frequent-but-unintentional insults against the Hyuuga, unwavering support of the man everyone blamed for starting the Third Shinobi World War, and being quite open about her sex ed workshops to everyone who was curious, Tsume was not a well-received or highly-respected person outside of her family and clan.

Adopting someone as unpopular as the Kyuubi wasn’t going to help Tsume’s own lack of popularity amongst the village’s adults. Shikaku had the distinct feeling that he was standing at the brink of a minor civil war. Tsume would probably win, because she was fearless and stubborn, and had powerful allies, such as the Hokage, Danzo, Kakashi, and Natsumi, but there would be casualties.

The blond hair beneath Shikaku’s callused hand was surprisingly soft. The child stared at him with such clear blue eyes, the likes of which Shikaku hadn’t seen since the night the Fourth Hokage was killed. “You’re in good hands,” he told Naruto solemnly. “This is a woman you will forever be proud to have as a mother.” Naruto would also probably be half-intimidated and more than a little overwhelmed if he was anything like his father, but that shouldn’t lessen the pride.

(Shikaku was so _not_ going to think of the possibility that Naruto might be a miniature Kushina, paired up once more with Tsume. Nope. Nosiree. He didn’t have nearly enough energy this early in the morning to figure out how to keep Konohagakure standing in the next ten years.)

Naruto’s answering smile was breathtaking.

Today started out perfectly. And while sitting and reading _The Tale of the Gutsy Shinobi_ as his son and more than a dozen orphans settled around the roaring fire wasn’t exactly the best interruption he could’ve had for his perfect day, it wasn’t all that bad.

Especially when Tsume browbeat Fugaku into washing the dishes before they left. (Tsume dried and stacked. Honestly, his younger sister wasn’t all that bad.)

)


	26. Delta Years - Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I complain now about Kishimoto's inability to keep a decent timeline?
> 
> Okay. So, it begins with Yamato, who AT MOST was five years old when Orochimaru's experiments were found and he was run out of town. Yamato is four years younger than Kakashi. Yamato would've been ten years old when the Kyuubi was released. Anko was the apprentice to Orochimaru. She's three years older than Yamato, and is a year younger than Kakashi. Now, this is all canon. It is also canon that Anko and her genin team were in the same chuunin exam as Kakashi, where he earned his chuunin promotion.
> 
> So she would've been five years old when Orochimaru signed her up for the exam, so unless she got signed up like a week after she graduated at the age of five from the academy, this is where dates really start to fall apart. Especially when she so did not look like a five year old. However, apparently, lots of five year olds graduated the academy around that time, including Rin and Obito. Orochimaru placed the cursed seal on Anko before he left Konoha, when she was eight years old. Prior to doing this, Orochimaru met Kabuto, who is three years younger than Yamoto, and six years younger than Anko. Now, Kabuto ORIGINALLY met Orochimaru when he accompanied Danzo to the orphanage so Danzo could force Nono to do a mission. Kabuto got recruited at the same time.
> 
> ... Which would be kinda hard to achieve, because KABUTO WAS TWO YEARS OLD WHEN OROCHIMARU LEFT TOWN. He wasn't even BORN yet when Anko was in the chuunin exam.
> 
> *sobs*
> 
> On a more funny note, I gotta figure out how Konoha managed to churn out so many five year old fighting machines. I can't even get MY five year old to pick up his shoes and put them away...

“That was a _D rank_ mission _?!”_ If Uchiha Yahiko’s voice pitched any higher, it could shatter glass. “As in twelve year old _genin_ do this _every month?”_

Danzo refrained from rubbing his temples. “Well, every three to six weeks, depending on how many of the participating individuals remember that the cares are due,” he said, leaning back against the kitchen wall to ease the strain on his leg – Tsume’s tall chairs were just too uncomfortable after their recent grueling undertaking. They had all congregated to the kitchen following the harrowing mission. The living room was dissected with makeshift clothes lines, lined with dripping wet clothes to dry with the aid of the well-fed, roaring fire. Yahiko and Yamato wore dry towels wrapped around their hips, the Hokage wore Danzo’s yukata from last night, and Danzo had absconded with Tsume’s old blue flannel bathrobe – which she had originally smuggled out of _his_ house nearly five years ago. He had long given it up as forever lost, so finding it washed and folded in the laundry room was a happy little perk.

After taking a sip from his tea (alas, completely devoid of cream), Danzo continued his explanation. “It’s an excellent teaching tool that allows genin to practice and develop their tracking, trapping, and ambushing skills in the safety of Konoha against an admirably skilled target, without the risk of undue harm to the genin – or to their target. Sakumo enjoys making it into a game.” He considered Yahiko long and hard over the rim of his teacup. “Please tell me you’ve heard of this mission at least _once_ – Tsume’s been running them for a decade or so.” It was also the highest-paying D rank mission, equal to short-term B ranks, given Sakumo’s exceedingly high skill level. After the Kyuubi’s attack, when Tsume struggled valiantly to put together the remains of her clan with their reduced resources, Hiruzen insisted on personally covering the cost of the mission by stating it should’ve been part of Sakumo’s “retirement package.”

He still remembered how Tsume teared up after Hiruzen spoke, clutching her change purse as she stood before the Hokage at the missions desk, looking ghastly white from her anemia and swaying like she was going to pass out. On the other hand, Kakashi probably _still_ simmered in embarrassment and resentment every time someone mentioned “retirement package” in his hearing. Danzo was really going to have to get that boy into therapy…

Danzo would never diminish the little honor and dignity left to his close friend by insinuating that the White Fang of Konoha was _reduced_ to fodder for a genin’s D-class mission. No matter how shattered the mind or how warped the psyche, Sakumo was still every bit an S rank shinobi, whose skills and talents equally rivaled any of the Sannin. Teaching children and encouraging the growth of their skills was one of the few things in life that brought Sakumo some semblance of satisfaction and cheer, even if it inevitably ended in the humiliation of getting dunked in bath water and scrubbed raw. To Sakumo’s delight, the genin were often in as much a need for a bath as he was when all was said and done.

Sakumo didn’t give adults the same regard, however, as demonstrated by how it took one Hokage, two elite (former and current) ANBU, and one experienced Uchiha policeman to subdue and strip Sakumo of his filthy rags, and only one naked toddler and horny old woman to settle

him down.

Yamato hid a yawn and curled up tighter in his spot on the floor; his head was pillowed against Kuromaru’s flank. “Better than chasing Tora, or being the poor schmuck who lost paper-rock-scissors and has to _be_ Tora,” he muttered as Hiruzen gently dressed the laceration that split open Yahiko’s cheek. Hiruzen and Yahiko were the only two properly seated at the kitchen table. “Besides, I told you that it’s a bad thing to try using the Sharingan on Sakumo. He doesn’t like having his mind messed with, and you just aren’t young or cute enough to get away with pulling a high-level technique on him. Like me.” Yamato’s bloody nose had been caused by one of Yahiko’s elbows.

The fact that Sakumo would never harm any of Tsume’s five children was left unmentioned.

Danzo silently vowed that this would be the last time he would allow Tsume to talk him into cleaning up Sakumo. He was simply much too old to be participating in any more mostly-naked, slippery, soap wrestling matches with men. Or with women, for that matter, except Tsume would consider _that_ to be a challenge if he ever voiced anything within her hearing. As it were, he was having too much difficulty not to appear like giving one man a bath had worn him out.

Danzo was also secretly smug that the one Sharingan user in their midst looked a lot worse than he did. Okay, maybe not _secretly_ smug…

Natsumi didn’t even look up from where she was filing Sakumo’s fingernails. “Sakumo has a soft spot for children, and they are rarely skilled enough to use a genjutsu that alarms him.” She dropped the hand and then smacked Sakumo in the shoulder. “Give me your other hand, now.”

Sakumo grudgingly obeyed Natsumi’s order. His thin hair was clean and cropped closely to his skull. His face was shaven, with a few minor scrapes on his chin. He was also clearly sulking as he sat beside Natsumi in the middle of the floor, his lap full of Kiba and two pups. Kiba quietly colored on the ridiculous trade embargo requests from the Earth Daimyo that the Fire Daimyo had forwarded to Hiruzen.

One such puppy had tried to crawl into Danzo’s lap. It took one look at his face – or perhaps one whiff of his scent, and decided that it would much rather lie down with Yamato.

Sakumo grumbled beneath his breath, occasionally rubbing his arm where Natsumi had given him some booster vaccinations. Dumpster-diving wasn’t exactly the most sanitary lifestyle, and came with risk for a lot of different diseases and parasites. Being clean and wearing decent clothes only highlighted how frightfully underweight he was.

“There are,” Hiruzen said cryptically as he moved on to wrapping Yahiko’s dislocated wrist, “very few adults whom Sakumo wouldn’t harm.” Hiruzen was one of those few adults – a privilege that came with being Sakumo’s Hokage, because Sakumo was still a loyal Konoha nin. Natsumi was another, and Danzo was pretty sure that it wasn’t just because Natsumi was nearly an impossible hundred years old or had deadly summons at her beck and call. For whatever reason, Sakumo had a soft spot in his heart for Natsumi, especially since the two of them looked out for each other in their own twisted, rather adorable ways. Natsumi would try to bring fresh food to Sakumo and get lost looking for him, and Sakumo would try to hunt her down and lead her back to the compound.

They sometimes spent the day wandering Konoha in circles, as Natsumi publicly berated Sakumo and Sakumo grinned and danced just out of her reach.

Danzo doubted that Tsume would ever qualify as an adult in Sakumo’s shattered mind, even when she had been visibly pregnant.

Kiba waved his crayon masterpiece in the air. It looked like he had drawn an abstract rendering of a tangled thorn brush that had been swept away by a tornado. “I’m done!” he declared. Then he twisted around in Sakumo’s lap and leaned forward, holding the paper out to Danzo.

Danzo accepted it, and gave the jumbled green and yellow scribbles serious consideration. He nodded his head solemnly at Kiba. “I see that you continue to put a lot of passion and consideration into your efforts. Good job disguising your message against enemy eyes.” He didn’t like to accept the idea of passion in shinobi pursuits, but Tsume would never allow him to successfully try any emotional training with the Inuzuka children – and he doubted that he really wanted to. He remembered, once and a lifetime ago, what it was like to be filled with the vim and vigor of life.

Sometimes, especially as he grew older, Danzo thought that he missed that passion. But he knew the twisted and painful paths such passion led a person down, and the depths of decay such paths eventually led even the best and brightest souls. The Sannin and Sakumo had once been as passionate as he had been. Now, Danzo was a bitter, cynical shadow of himself. Of the Sannin, one was a gambling lush with haemophobia, the second a mad scientist unlimited by a decent set of ethics, and the third a guilt-ridden spymaster who buried his regrets within erotic tripe and the occasional novel retelling some ancient legend or mythology. Of Sakumo... well, Danzo was used to rubbing the salt of his mistakes into the festering wounds that Hiruzen once warned him about.

Tobirama followed the footsteps of Hashirama and taught his team about love – love of Konoha, love of friends and clan, love of duty – and the importance of protecting all of that with one’s heart. But Tobirama, in all his wisdom and knowledge, never taught Danzo how to protect one’s heart. The heart could only take so many wounds before the scar tissue deadened sensations. 

All Danzo could hope for was to redirect and funnel the passion of Tsume’s children into a worthy pursuit, to see that they would never have to reach the depths that Tsume had in her youth, or the depths he reached in his adulthood. It was the least that he owed that ( _twelve years old TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD)_ woman.

Kiba glared at him for a long moment, and then declared imperiously of his sloppy creation, “It’s a _duck_.”

Danzo turned the picture around in his hand, unable to see any remote resemblance to a water fowl, but nodded his head anyway. He knew it would somehow wind up on the fridge in the current ROOT base, held in place with a yellow smiley-face magnet that currently graced the surface of Tsume’s refrigerator. “Of course. As I said, it’s been cleverly disguised against enemy eyes. A fine talent that is greatly needed in our cipher department.”

Especially when a bored Kiri nin had intercepted the latest coded missive between the cipher department and a Konoha subordinate stationed near Grass, wrote the translation out like she was solving a crossword puzzle, and then returned it to Konoha with a written note in the margin, _Come on you guys – you can do better than this!_ Danzo still hadn’t decided if he ought to kill Ameyuri-san, or send her a bouquet as a thank you. Well, the Swordsmen (and woman) of Kiri were notoriously difficult to kill, so a bouquet of foxgloves and nightshade might be more appropriate. With any luck, she’d eat them.

Kiba decided to take Danzo’s words as a compliment, and readily accepted another report from Hiruzen to scribble on (an elegant, verbose complaint from the local hot springs regarding a certain former student of the Hokage’s following his most recent visit to Konoha). Hiruzen smiled at Kiba as he finished patching up Yahiko and turned to the pile of papers that had been hastily delivered from the Hokage’s office. He brushed raisin muffin crumbs off the pile. Another puppy was snoozing in Hiruzen’s lap.

From the sounds of it, the remaining puppies were causing an unholy level of destruction in the living room with the couch cushions. Danzo felt vindicated.

The front door slammed open. Sakumo would’ve bolted despite the little occupants in his lap, but couldn’t because Natsumi bunched his sleeve in her fist and shook the nail file at his nose. “I didn’t get dragged out of bed before ten just to have you skedaddle before I’m finished,” she warned him. “My coffee hasn’t quite kicked in yet, so stay still.”

Sakumo hunched down and nodded unhappily as Tsume and Fugaku entered the kitchen, kicking snow off their boots and slipping out of winter coats. Tsume put Naruto on the ground as the puppies surged around the corner from the living room. A few of them were covered with cushion stuffing. Naruto was engulfed by happy, eager puppies with wagging tails and slobbery tongues. Naruto’s laugh was clear as a bell as he threw his arms around to gather as many as he could in a hug. Then he growled when a puppy got too careless with its teeth, and bit the puppy back on its tail. It yipped.

Tsume divested Naruto of his winter layers and pried him free of the puppy’s tail. “Look, if you want to chew on something, I’ve got a bone you can use instead. Stop picking on the pups, they’re smaller than you.” She piled the clothes on a near-by bench, and then walked around Naruto to the pantry. “Do you want the good news, or the bad news?” she asked Danzo. She dragged out a large bag of kibble and bumped the pantry door shut, bouncing on one foot while using the other to push a puppy away from the closing door. “Gotta get chow together. The pups are off their schedule."

Fugaku muttered, “What good news?” and gave Tsume a sideways glare.

Hiruzen looked ready to hide behind his stack of paperwork. “What bad news?”

Yamato groaned and flipped onto his other side. “Going to sleep now,” he said as he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his head more tightly against Kuromaru. “Unless we’re being invaded, I don’t need to be disturbed for any good or bad news.”

Tsume set aside the kibble. She hefted Yamato to his feet, and then embraced him tightly. “Head off to bed, sweetie. Thanks for everything you did.”

He yawned into her hair. “Sure.”

Tsume waited until he was out of hearing as Fugaku seated himself at the kitchen table beside the Hokage and fished some documents out of his shirt. Fugaku looked at Yahiko. “Where are your clothes and what happened to your eye?”

“Er, wet, sir.” Yahiko adjusted his towel self-consciously. “And a D rank mission happened to me, sir.”

“Go put on your clothes, even if they are wet. I need you to deliver an urgent message to the Assistant Head of Internal Affairs to meet us here. And then go to the Station and get dry clothes, please.” Yahiko was quick in obeying orders, especially given the dark glare that Fugaku had plastered on his face.

Naruto crawled out of the squirming pile of puppies as they started attacking each other with growls and nips, more careful not to bite anyone. He looked uncertain as Tsume poured the kibble into three large metal bowls. Eleven puppies instantly started crowding her ankles. “Stop it, you guys. I still have to get the gravy into these.” Tsume lifted the bowls and set them on the countertop. Kiba didn’t look up from his coloring.

The Hokage beckoned Naruto over, and then handed Naruto an orange crayon and a request from the Elder Council for a meeting next week regarding the International summer chuunin exam, to be hosted at Suna. “So, what’s the good news?” he asked as Naruto looked around the kitchen, and then resolutely seated himself beside Danzo. Naruto met Danzo’s gaze for a moment in challenge, grinned, and then turned his attention to his coloring when Danzo didn’t blink.

Tsume mixed large spoonfuls of chicken gravy in with the kibble, stirring until the kibble was coated. “I got a really great buy one, get fourteen free deal at the orphanage.”

Natsumi looked up from the nail filing. “Any girls?”

“Three.”

“Excellent.” Natsumi resumed the filing.

The Hokage stared at Tsume for a moment, turned his gaze on Fugaku, and then pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Please don’t tell me that you two killed the orphanage director for what happened to Naruto and that’s why Tsume took over the orphanage.”

“No. _We_ didn’t kill anyone.” Fugaku struggled to relax his face into a more neutral expression. “The events from last night regarding the jinchuuriki for leaving the orphanage is due to the director being dead for a number of days, and the orphans were left without any adult supervision.”

“Ah. So the other orphans are only temporarily under Tsume’s custody.”

Fugaku looked at the sheath of papers that he had withdrawn. The papers crinkled in his white-knuckled grip. “I don’t honestly know if we could place the orphans anywhere else.” He placed the papers in front of Hiruzen. “Please review for mistakes before signing them.”

Hiruzen gently shoved his current stack of paperwork over to make room and read through the first three pages. “Looks like everything is in order here for Naruto. Did you get word back from Jiraiya?”

Tsume grinned, but Danzo could tell it was more for show than from actual humor. “Yeah, when we were washing Shikaku’s dishes. Jiraiya said that he’d love to talk to my fine piece of ass when he got back, gave me some advice on how potted cactuses don’t require as much feed and water as a toddler, and that I may have uncontested custody of Naruto.” She clicked her tongue at the puppies and carried the metal bowls to the living room. The puppies crowded after her. “We’ll just drop the food off here and… oh, sorry, Uchiha. Didn’t know that you were naked already. Love the birthmark, it’s adorable!” Tsume quickly retreated from the living room, pausing long enough to erect the child’s safety gate in the entrance dividing the two rooms. One puppy, not following his hungry brethren, pressed a paw against the wire gate and whined unhappily. Tsume shooed it back.

“So why are you looking to foster the other fourteen orphans…” Hiruzen nearly dropped the papers in surprise, and then pressed his face closer for a better look at the writing. “And why do you have _Danzo_ written down for _their foster father_?”

Danzo leveled a scorching glare at Tsume, but she deliberately avoided his eye as she flopped on the floor between Naruto and Kuromaru. She looped an arm around Kuromaru and rubbed his flank.

“Well,” Tsume said, wiggling her feet, “the orphans said that no one wanted them because they were naughty children who’ve already been tainted by the jinchuuriki, and Danzo likes children–”

“I most certainly do not!” Danzo effortlessly ignored how Naruto was poking his orange crayon against Danzo’s elbow. It was best to ignore misbehavior instead of feeding it with any attention, good or bad.

“—so I figured that we could have a shared custody of them, since some of the older kids ought to be in school, but I don’t know where to put them in the academy or anywhere else, really, since they know about Naruto. They look really, really haunted, and kinda remind me of Shi and Hyo, and I remembered when Danzo was still in ANBU, working with the stragglers and Sakumo. I figured we could do this together like our own little project, you know?”

_Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck._ Tsume was up to something, he just knew it. There was no way that she would dump fourteen orphans willy-nilly into his ROOT division, no matter how much they knew about the jinchuuriki. Granted, such children couldn’t be allowed out in the public until they learned that they absolutely couldn’t reveal Naruto’s identity, because he very much doubted that Hiruzen would allow a certain seal to be placed on their tongues.

And they must not have been allowed out in public, because Danzo, despite all the ears he had in the underground, hadn’t heard a single whisper of the Hokage’s law being broken at the orphanage. His blood ran cold at the realization. _What else has slipped past my awareness_?

Yahiko squished past them to the open door, pausing long enough to accept and shrug on Fugaku’s dry winter coat.

Naruto pressed himself tightly against Danzo, as if Danzo might be able to protect him. Tsume slid her other arm around Naruto. Danzo glanced sideways at Tsume – she had a blank, faraway look in her eyes. Danzo’s mind worked ferociously to understand Tsume’s intentions. That was the problem with trying to outthink her – half the time, Tsume _didn’t_ think, and instead just reacted with whatever information her nose was giving her. And when she could smell so much beyond the comprehension of most humans, it was next to impossible to predict her reactions.

“And _who_ told the orphans?” Danzo half-expected Hiruzen’s paperwork to be drenched in frost from the question’s biting cold.

Tsume didn’t look the least bit deterred by any hint of frost. “The dead director. And don’t look at me like that, Hokage-sama! I didn’t kill him – he died last week from old age. Actually, he had a heart attack from the smell of it, which usually goes hand in hand with old age. Fugaku said he’s turning this over to Internal Affairs because we couldn’t figure out why his men never noticed that the orphanage was being run by a bunch of children who didn’t know what they were doing.” Or why ANBU never noticed, either, but the Police had no jurisdiction over ANBU; only Internal Affairs and the Hokage had that power, and was probably why Fugaku had sent his minion off for the Assistant Head of Internal Affairs.

“Well,” Danzo said darkly, because he had a very good feeling that the involved Uchiha Policemen probably hadn’t _cared_ , “that saves T&I some work. Uchiha-san, could you excuse us for a moment? And please take Natsumi-san with you.” Fugaku must’ve choked on his pride when he decided to turn the matter over to IA. The Assistant Head was even more antagonistic towards the Uchiha than Danzo.

Natsumi glared at him suspiciously. “Why?”

Danzo showed her his teeth. “I wish to try talking some sense into your niece, and we all know how well she does with complicated subjects.”

Fugaku rolled his eyes in exasperation and mumbled _simpleton_ under his breath as he accepted a sheath of papers from Hiruzen that required delivery to the missions desk and borrowed Tsume’s coat. Her shoulders were nearly as wide as Fugaku’s, although the sleeves were too short. Fugaku seemed all too eager to get away, as if the prospect of facing IA was just slightly more favorable than spending more time with Tsume. Which Danzo could sympathize with, all things considering. Inuzuka women just had that effect on people. “I’ll return with the Assistant Head of IA, Hokage-sama.”

Natsumi stood with her joints popping and cracking a few times, and then dusted her bottom off. “I’ll just go hang with Kakashi. He’s probably still snoring in my bed, but I bet his bandages could use some changing.” She snagged the first aid kit on her way out.

Sakumo watched Natsumi’s retreat with a desperate look of longing.

Tsume stood, and then pointed a stern finger at Sakumo. “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve had something to eat, buster. I’ll make some ramen for you.”

Naruto hastily climbed to his feet and ran after Tsume. “Me too!” he yelled.

Not to be undone, Kiba also clambered out of Sakumo’s lap and hurried over to Tsume. He shoved Naruto out of the way and grabbed fistfuls of Tsume’s pants. “I want some! Me too!” Naruto’s face crumpled, but he managed not to break into tears as he shoved Kiba back. Kiba released Tsume’s pants and tackled Naruto with a growl.

Sakumo whimpered as he rocked, unable to turn his eyes away from the two boys. Tsume picked the boys off the floor as they squabbled with each other, pushing and shoving and scratching and biting, and dumped them in Sakumo’s lap.

“I’ll make enough for everyone. Just be patient for, like, four minutes. Sheesh.”

Sakumo grinned as he hugged Naruto and Kiba close. Naruto and Kiba glared at each other, and then went back to pushing and shoving and kicking. Sakumo attempted to tickle toes amidst the flailing limbs.

Hiruzen looked at Danzo. “So, I take it that you wanted to discuss your latest gardening hobby? I heard the aphids were unkind to your last crop of daisies.” Which was the main reason why he had to implement seals on tongues, not after all the information had been tortured out of two ROOT subordinates. It had been a bloody clean up mess to prevent the rest of the Shinobi world from learning about Konoha’s ROOT.

Danzo glared at Hiruzen. “ _My_ garden is not an appropriate place for Tsume to dump fourteen orphans into.” 

Danzo’s garden: ROOT. The Division-that-wasn’t. An offshoot of ANBU that Hiruzen never admitted to knowing about, on account of plausible deniability. Hiruzen had “officially” disbanded it a number of years ago, and Danzo would be denounced and executed as a traitor if it ever became public knowledge.

_(“Danzo, how would you like to be the leader of an autonomous but officially unsanctioned branch of ANBU that I can use to root out traitors and dissent? You’ll need to act as if you’re trying to undermine and eventually overthrow me, and be generally appealing to traitors, but you get be as brutal and sadistic as your heart so desires. Mind you, I shall deny any involvement in the blink of an eye, and would hang you for treason if you’re caught. That is the price of this particular S rank Black Ops.”_

_“Hiruzen, just why do your ideas always make me look like an unmitigated bastard?”_

_“Oh, don’t be like that. You’re literally the only person I can trust to have this much power and control, working in the shadows behind my back. Even if you plant a kunai in it, I know that my death would serve the greater purpose for Konoha. But you must remember – Konoha mustn’t just **live,** she has to **thrive.** ”)_

“Ah.” Hiruzen’s hands strayed to the area of Danzo’s robes where he normally kept his pipe and tobacco, and then he dropped his hands away with a sigh. “Admittedly, it’s probably the best place for them right now, even if,” he glanced through the papers, “some of them aren’t quite out of diapers yet.”

Kiba giggled and kicked his feet as Sakumo tickled his stomach.

“ _Those_ can probably be adopted out without a problem.”

Naruto squealed and tried to tickle Sakumo in retaliation.

Tsume shook her head. “Not really – not if people think they’ve been tainted by the jinchuuriki. That’s what the orphans told me, at least. I can tell my clan what to do though, so I could give the four infants to Oyubi.”

Danzo scoffed. “Oyubi-san has never really wanted any children of her own, and you think she’s going to readily accept _four_ of them? She can barely keep up with her baby brother.” To be fair to Oyubi, no one could really keep up with her baby brother – not even Kakashi, and he had helped train the little monster.

Tsume considered this as she assembled the supplies needed to make ramen. “Not true. Oyubi said she wouldn’t mind children if she didn’t have to go through the whole pregnancy and body horror. Well, we could always give them to Aunt Natsumi.”

“And drive her into an early grave?” Hiruzen asked, his voice dry.

Danzo snorted and shifted his weight so he could fold his good leg over his bad leg. “I doubt that Natsumi would wind up in the grave.” _He_ might. “Sakumo would be a better caretaker, if we knew he could stick around in one place long enough.” Dumpsters weren’t much better for raising children than, apparently, this orphanage.

Sakumo captivated Naruto and Kiba’s attention as he showed them cat’s cradle with crackling white chakra strings. They watched with wide eyes, argument all but forgotten, seated on the floor in front of Sakumo.

“Tsume,” Danzo said, “just _what_ was going through your head when you made this decision?”

Tsume ripped the ramen packaging open with her teeth. “I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking that I wasn’t thinking, except I was. See, I thought it was really weird that this was the same orphanage that Nono ran – the same orphanage that Kabuto was in. It kinda made me wonder if Orochimaru isn’t somehow involved. I couldn’t smell him.” She hesitated briefly, and then continued, “But I wasn’t trying, and that doesn’t necessarily mean a thing. Orochimaru and coincidences really don’t go hand in hand. I figured that Danzo and I are probably the best when it comes to dealing with Orochimaru’s experiments, but I knew I couldn’t handle _all_ of them on my own.”

Fair enough, Danzo considered. Ever since Yamato, Tsume had made every Orochimaru-experiment misfit that she stumbled upon her own personal mission. Tsume thought of Mitarashi Anko as the daughter who got away. Tsume invested more time and effort into Anko than Kokoro did, but Kokoro refused to abdicate her responsibility as legal guardian and aunt. To be fair to Kokoro, the Curse Seal was best handled by someone who wasn’t limited by a wheelchair, and Anko desperately needed a mentor who _wasn’t_ Danzo and wouldn’t ( _couldn’t_ ) fear her or her Heaven Seal.

“And then I thought, gosh, and here I just told Danzo the other day that his little weeds would make really lousy infiltrators because they’re so emotionally stunted that they’d stick out like a Suna puppeteer in a convention of Snow Maidens.” It didn’t help that his weeds were usually too traumatized and/or strange to get along in normal society, which was why they fit in ROOT so well. Danzo didn’t create; he merely honed. “I bet if they became involved and really skilled at simple things like childcare, they could blend in with society better. Isn’t that why we always had to do D rank missions?”

Danzo preempted Hiruzen’s smug smile with a hair-raising glower. “Whose organization is this?”

Tsume grinned as she mixed the seasoning packets with the noodles. “What organization?”

“ _Who_ gave you permission to do this? Because _I_ didn’t.”

Tsume skipped past them to fetch the water kettle from the living room’s fireplace. “Gosh, Danzo, who’re you going to complain to about me trying to usurp your authority? The Hyuuga? It’s not like the Hokage approves of this illegal organization, anyway. Hey – what happened to my couch cushions?”

Kuromaru sat upright and walked over to join Sakumo and the two boys. He laid down behind the boys, tail curling around until it rested over their legs, and grumbled under his breath.

“Yeah, Danzo,” Hiruzen said, sounding smug despite his straight face as he shuffled through the papers once more. “Who _are_ you going to complain to?”

“You just keep that in mind the next time anyone like Hanzo approaches me with an offer to assist in assassinating you so I can get the Hokage’s position. I might just go through on that offer.”

“If you didn’t kill me over taking your blankets when you should’ve been in traction, I doubt that you’d kill me now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, either.” He still hadn’t forgave Hiruzen for breaking into his house, dragging Danzo out of his funk, unloading babysitting duty for a colicky jinchuuriki onto him because Hiruzen claimed he couldn’t trust anyone else to bottle-feed the runt without it ending in blood and tears, and then eventually stealing the blanket and most of the futon when Hiruzen finally got around to sleeping.

Sakumo looked up from the boys and gave Danzo a blindingly bright smile.

“See?” Hiruzen said. “If Sakumo can tell you’re currently all bark, then I know this is going to work out.” He stamped some of the adoption documents. “The youngest who have no concept of the jinchuuriki and are unlikely to retain memories of what was said and done and can be placed with trusted families that we can observe from afar for any possible influence from Orochimaru. That still leaves the oldest – too many, it looks like. I don’t think that Tsume should take all seven of them, given that she now has six children with first claims to her attention.”

Hiruzen flipped through all the papers, and then sighed. “Nine, six years old. Well, I’ll give you the oldest two, and you can have shared custody with Tsume. If anyone asks why Shimura Danzo suddenly developed an interest in heirs or offspring, I’ll just tell them that Tsume was authorized to assume control of the entire orphanage upon the discovered death of the previous director, and you are assisting her because you are a responsible citizen with far too much time on his hands since retiring from active shinobi duty.”

“I didn’t retire.” Danzo twisted the wrist of his bound arm to salute his old friend and comrade with a middle finger. “You forced me out with this nonsense of physical disability.”

Hiruzen gave him a droll look. Danzo only got vulgar when he was feeling frazzled. “The Kyuubi put you into _traction_ , and you didn’t even wait long enough for the muscle relaxants to kick in before ducking out of the hospital.”

Danzo matched the droll look with an unapologetic shrug. “I reiterate once more that I was merely trying to free up a bed for someone who was in worse condition than I was. How badly injured could I possibly have been if I could successfully climb out a window and crawl home through the rubble?”

“You would’ve lost _full_ use of your arm and leg if Sakumo hadn’t found you and made a reasonable attempt at nursing you back to health. Besides, at least with _this_ way, you can’t say my latest idea makes you look like an unmitigated bastard.”

“Ah, yes, because nothing says generosity quite like someone who looks after orphans, right? The last time you spread word around of my new gardening hobby, the Yamanaka flower shop refused to do any business with me for six months in fear of my black thumb. When word gets around that I’ve assumed responsibility for orphans, the Akamichi won’t let me anywhere near their candy shops or bakeries.”

Tsume swung her legs over the baby gate, black kettle swaying in one hand while she balanced four intact cushions in another. “I had to save these – they’re the only ones that the pups didn’t get to,” she said as she dropped the cushions in a corner.

The men were silent as she poured the hot water over the noodles, stirred to dissolve the seasonings, and then set the Styrofoam cups aside for a few minutes to soften up. She leaned back against the counter and studied the two boys for a moment as they attempted to mimic Sakumo’s chakra strings. “I think this will work out very well,” she said brightly. “So, what’re we doing?

Hiruzen handed her a sheath of papers. “Fourteen children is too much for you to handle all at once, when your first priority of the new orphans should be Naruto. It’s not fair to Kushina’s child, or to your own.” Tsume’s face fell. “You will share custody with Danzo on the eldest two – Fuu and Sai. The remainder, here, may be absorbed by your clan.”

Tsume plucked at the edge of the papers, trying not to look disheartened. After a moment, she said, “No pup should ever be unwanted, no matter who tinkered with them.”

“It’s not a matter of wanting, Tsume. It’s a matter of making sure you don’t take on more than you can handle. And since you can’t tell yourself no when it comes to vulnerable children, I must do so for you.”

Tsume nibbled her bottom lip. She looked ready to argue for a few moments, and then deflated when she glanced sideways at the two boys. “I’m sure my clan will absorb the rest.” It would give Tsume the ability to still closely watch the children for any undue taint without being overwhelmed. But it wouldn’t be easy to get her clanswomen to adopt non-Inuzuka boys. 

“Any questions, Danzo?”

“What do you mean by shared custody? One week with me, then one week with Tsume?”

“Oh, I’ll leave you two to figure that out. You’re both _such_ mature adults who like to talk out your problems, after all.” Hiruzen turned back to his regular pile of paperwork, radiating smug superiority once again.

Danzo sullenly pondered whether this latest stunt was justification for finally planting that kunai into Hiruzen’s back.

oOoOoOo

Tsume had the ramen divided in three bowls (the largest portion meant for Sakumo), when she darted to the kitchen door. She threw it open, stuck her head through, and yelled, “Don’t you _dare_ come pushing into my house smelling of that attitude! You’ll spook Sakumo, and the Hokage just got him washed and groomed. Go stick your head in a snow bank until you stop simmering, because Sakumo hasn’t eaten yet.” And then, after a brief moment in which Danzo was sure the incoming persons were stunned silent from Tsume’s unexpected offense, Tsume added, “But you may come in and warm your toes, Fugaku.”

Fugaku did, doing a poor job at masking his glee. He knocked the snow off his boots as Tsume handed out ramen and chopsticks to Sakumo and the two boys. Sakumo turned twitchy eyes to the kitchen door, and spent more time fidgeting with his chopsticks than actually eating.

Hiruzen looked up from his paperwork. “Did you honestly just tell the Assistant Head of Internal Affairs to stick his head in a snow bank? Really, Tsume, you shouldn’t antagonize authority like that.” Hiruzen wasn’t amused with her disrespect. Kagami had invested almost his entire adult life working to create respect for Internal Affairs. Danzo was amused – and so was Fugaku, it appeared, but they were both wise enough to be subtle about their amusement.

Tsume stubbornly crossed her arms before herself. “That ass spooked Sakumo the last time he came storming into my kitchen, before I even started on the injections. It took three months before I could get Sakumo to hold still for his shots again. I wouldn’t let the Uchiha Police storm their way into my property when Naruto was scared, so why should I let anyone else? I don’t care if he is the Assistant Head. As long as Kagami is alive, _that_ man will follow Kagami’s example, and I will hold him to it until the day I die. Kagami never throws his weight or his clan name around, and he was always polite and gentle when requiring my presence.”

Kuromaru raised his head up. “Besides, he doesn’t like Sakumo.” Kuromaru spoke so rarely to nin-Inuzuka adults that everyone took a moment to mull over his words.

“I do,” Fugaku said, gently. He even smiled at Sakumo. His general hostility towards Kakashi over the Sharingan eye never affected the way he treated Sakumo. Danzo had a smidgeon of respect for Fugaku for such. Danzo didn’t have respect for much else about Fugaku, but a lesser man would’ve extended the hostility towards the father of Kakashi.

Sakumo hunched over his ramen as his cheeks turned red. He twirled the noodles around. Fugaku sat down beside Hiruzen at the kitchen table.

“ _We_ all adore you,” Tsume told Sakumo as she moved to crouch beside him. She grinned as she threw an arm around his shoulders and planted a dry kiss against his cheek. The color in Sakumo’s cheeks increased, but his mouth twisted into a goofy grin. As Tsume moved to stuff napkins down the front of the boys’ shirts to keep them clean from spilled broth, Sakumo turned his attention to his own food. He ate without the supplied chopsticks.

“I suppose,” Danzo began, not moving, “that I should get up and make myself more presentable.”

“Going to be hard to do that with my bathrobe,” Tsume said, dabbing at Kiba’s chin. He squirmed away from her. Naruto tilted his bowl to drain the last vestiges of broth and nearly toppled over backwards. Sakumo chewed with his mouth open.

Danzo secured the flannel more tightly around himself. _My bathrobe._

“In all fairness,” Fugaku began, once Tsume gathered up bowls and chopsticks, “I don’t believe that Tsume, the children, or Sakumo should be present during this review and discussion.”

Tsume glared defensively. “My children!”

“Yes,” Fugaku said with a knowing nod, “and the Assistant Head is deliberately going to use language that’s going to rile you up, to try and show the Hokage that you’re too unstable to be a parent to the host of the nine-tailed demon. Believe me when I say that the man is _very_ prejudiced against the jinchuuriki – I had to hear about it _all_ the way from headquarters. Honestly, Hokage-sama, he is a very poor substitute for Kagami, and I really think you should appoint someone else – and I’m not just saying this because I’m used to an Uchiha holding the office of Head of Internal Affairs. Have you considered Aburame Shikuro? He’s much more likely to keep a situation calm when investigating, instead of deliberately goading and destabilizing the situation.”

Tsume growled.

Danzo tilted his head back and chuckled, so Tsume leveled her growl at him. “Come now,” he told her, “it looks like plans A through C are not viable options. It’s time for Plan D.”

Tsume’s growled shifted into confusion. She blinked a few times, glancing from Danzo, to Fugaku, to Sakumo (who was looking rather nervous and shy as he wrung his hands), and then back to Danzo. “I have a Plan D?”

“Yes. Divide and diffuse.”

“That…” She frowned in thought, no doubt racking her brain for all the strategy that she could remember Sakumo, Danzo, and Kokoro forcing on her throughout the years. “That doesn’t fall under B?”

Danzo supposed, given her linear thinking, that it qualified in the most remote sense. “Not necessarily. Remove the motivation to fight, diffuse the situation before it has a chance to occur, and you’ve already won the battle. In this case, the Hokage approves of your adoption. By removing yourself and Naruto from this area, you will essentially eliminate the weapons before they can be used against you. You cannot perpetrate a perceived crime if you’re not present to do so.”

The frown deepened. “I think you lost me.”

Fugaku rolled his eyes. “If you aren’t here, then Hyuuga-san can’t make you lose your temper, and then he won’t have an argument to present to the Hokage.”

“Oh. Oooooooh.” She set the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. “So… I guess I could go talk to Oyubi about what I’m doing. And she can help me decide which of our clanswomen might be interested in adopting some of the boys.” In the last twelve years, only ten Inuzuka women had chosen to keep their sons. Half of those women were dead, following the Kyuubi’s attack. “And I guess there’s no time like the present.”

“Of course,” Hiruzen said primly, no doubt pleased that Tsume wasn’t going to be around to inadvertently antagonize and insult another powerful clan. “Take the papers with you, here. It has their information.” Tsume frequently got away with it with the Uchiha – Danzo suspected that the lenience that the Uchiha clan gave Tsume was that of an exasperated, barely-tolerant big brother who was reluctantly fond of his special-needs sister, as they seemed to have taken a page out of Kagami’s book – but that was a sentiment not shared with the equally-haughty Hyuuga clan.

As Tsume shepherded the two boys and Sakumo from her kitchen to the wide window in the living room (“Put your shirt back on, Sakumo! It’s freezing outside and I’m already wearing four layers! No, no, arms back in the sleeves!”) with Kuromaru following closely at their heels, Danzo sadly reflected that it was a true shame that Kagami’s failing heart had forced him into semi-retirement at the same time as Sakumo spiraled into madness. Perhaps, if the Assistant Head of the IA had conducted the inquest into Sakumo’s failed mission with the calm finesse that Kagami was so renowned for, his blundering subordinate might not have shattered into such a spectacular mess. Or maybe it would’ve only delayed the inevitable effects of Orochimaru’s seal.

Danzo made a mental note to side with Fugaku on replacing the Assistant Head… Even if he had to arrange an accident that would open up said position of Assistant Head.

Tsume always felt that the destruction had been deliberate on Hiro’s part, although Danzo felt that ignorance was more the cause than anything else. Danzo had learned, over the years, to never attribute to malice without first considering general stupidity and pride. Of course, ignorance was not an acceptable excuse in Danzo’s book – not for Hyuuga Hiro and certainly not for Danzo, because he should’ve realized sooner that something had been wrong with Sakumo ever since the mission with the circus.

Danzo rose from his place on the kitchen floor, and walked to the door to let in Hyuuga Hiro. If there was anyone in the village that he chose to actively (and subtly) undermine and demean besides the Uchiha clan, it was the Assistant Head of IA, who would never be as worthy as Kagami. Danzo’s smile felt like it belonged to Orochimaru as he opened the door and bowed his head slightly in greeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this chapter early, because I'm going on a 4400 mile road trip/vacation with the family for two weeks, and won't be home to post any additional chapters. I'll post the next chapter on Wednesday before I leave.


	27. Delta Years - Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea just how short this chapter was. Well, I mean, it's 5300 words, so it's not short-short, but outside of the interlude, it's probably the shortest chapter so far.

Tsume rapidly stuffed her two toddlers into winter clothes and then snuck them and Sakumo out the window of her living room, and trekked through the snow to Oyubi's. Unsurprisingly, Sakumo disappeared in the time it took Tsume to snag the two boys as they tussled in the snow, twenty seconds after their hasty retrest. It worried Tsume that the father of her heart would much rather disappear into the dark allies and unsheltered streets in this cold snap than to stay with her. But she had long realized that too many conflicting emotions in too small of an area was far too much for him to handle.

Sakumo had always known how to read hearts, and that didn't change with his fractured reality – it only seemed heightened to screamingly-loud frequencies.

"Well," she told the boys with too much cheer, "I guess this means that Sakumo-senpai had other important things to attend. That's okay. We'll just visit Oyubi-san by ourselves."

Kiba threw his mitten-clad hands up in the air and bounced around on the trampled snow. "Yay! 'Yubi-san! 'Yubi-san! I like 'Yubi-san." He stuffed his hands into his pockets for a moment, and then withdrew something with a curious expression. "Wazzis?" He brightened. "Ooooh, mommy! Mommy, look at this!" He waved his fist excitedly in the air for a moment, and then dropped its contents onto Tsume's open palm.

She found herself the proud recipient of a large, dead snail as Kiba ran off to find something equally disgusting. Tsume briefly wondered how long he had been storing it there, since it smelled rather stale and looked mummified.

"Can I see?" Naruto asked, the orange pompom on his hat bobbing as he tugged her arm down to his eye level.

Tsume shrugged, and handed the dead snail to Naruto. It wasn't diseased, slimy, tainted, poisoned, or rigged to spontaneously burst into a cloud of glue and sparkles (ah, one of the greatest ambushes that she, Kokoro, and Kushina had ever pulled – pity that the Fire Daimyo hadn't felt the same, which was how the Unholy Trio wound up with a lifetime ban against ever setting foot in a craft store in all of Fire Country. Tsume always felt this was a blatant abuse of power because they really hadn't expected the Daimyo and his Fire Guardians to detour through that way. And in Tsume's defense, Senju Uta had been out to get Tsume ever since Aunt Natsumi dropped a whale on Uta).

Naruto lost the snail almost as quickly as he received it, since he tried to stuff it in his mouth after Tsume told him no.

After four snowballs, an icicle war, and a stern lecture on why the boys weren't allowed to eat the yellow snow – or brown snow, or red snow, or any other snow that wasn't perfectly pristine white – they finally arrived on Oyubi's doorstep. It was a grand total of three hundred steps from the living room window of Tsume's house.

"Long morning?" Oyubi asked blandly as she held the door open. She wore a chunky purple sweater that brought out the reddish highlights of her black hair. Her face was carefully blank as Naruto and Kiba stampeded past her into the kitchen, their icicle sabers clutched close.

"Yubi-san keeps cookies thisaway!" Kiba called, pointing with his saber. Naruto, after casting one wary look at Oyubi, followed after Kiba like a hyperactive lemming off a cliff.

Oyubi's grip on Tsume's upper arm was painful as she pushed Tsume to a stop at the open door. Oyubi pressed her mouth to Tsume's ear and whispered, "Are you _out of your flipping mind?_ What is _that thing_ doing here?"

Tsume pushed the anger down. After all, until last night, she hadn't thought anything different. But the blatant challenge against her – the demand of an explanation from someone who fashioned herself to be a gamma – made Tsume's stomach curdle and a bitter taste linger at the tip of her tongue. She smelled Oyubi's fear simmering beneath the calm façade, caught a hint of killing intent that was barely constrained. Oyubi had lost just as many loved ones as Tsume did on October 10th.

Tsume took a breath, thought a moment, and then knocked her foot against the door to close it. Kuromaru stood at her side, staring up at Oyubi as tension coiled his body. He tucked his tail low and laid his ears flat, but remained silent. The scent he gave off – _back_ **_off_** – permeated the air like an undercurrent beneath the odors of Oyubi's emotions and the Kyuubi.

Tsume sighed and ran a hand through her hair, and was momentarily distracted when she found a hair tie that probably belonged to Hana. Huh. She had been looking for that yesterday… It reminded her that she probably hadn't brushed her hair this morning, just as she also hadn't gotten around to putting on her clan markings "Do you remember Mooncalf?" She flapped her hand impatiently. "Yeah, yeah, esteemed Hokage-sama to many, except for us privileged few who knew him to be what he really was."

Oyubi shifted her stance, but at least her eyes hadn't changed yet. That was always a good thing. "I'm aware of who that _thing_ 's father is."

Tsume felt a stabbing pain in her chest, like someone had slid a knife through her ribs, and it burned like a hot coal. "Oh. Then… Then I guess you know Naruto's mother." _And you never said a word to me._ She felt herself choking on the last word. "Then you know why he'd be so important to me."

Oyubi stepped close. She loomed a full head over Tsume, spiky hair and all, but looked taller because she was whipcord lean everywhere but her chest. Her voice dropped into a low whisper. "And this is what you'll be facing for many years to come, Tsume. You'll be fighting an uphill battle against people's fear, hatred, anger, and pain. Is this something you want to spend the rest of your life facing and fighting? Can you back down when your hackles are on end?"

Naruto and Kiba hurried around the corner, their hands and pocket stuffed with cookies. "Can we go outside?" Kiba asked eagerly, his face smeared with crumbs. Naruto nodded his head and jumped up and down, oblivious to Oyubi's emotions – his smile lit up like the morning sun.

"Play! Play! Play!"

Tsume immediately opened the door. The boys fell over themselves, tumbling outside. "Go with them," she told Kuromaru. He stared at Oyubi for a moment, and then followed after the boys with a huff. The look he gave Tsume said it all – _I sure hope you know what you're doing._

Tsume shut the door with a soft click. "Are you telling me this to be kind, or because you're going to be one of those people I have to fight uphill?"

Oyubi stepped away from Tsume, clasping her hands behind herself and peering through a parting of the curtains. "I don't know," she said after a moment of thought. "I knew something was up when the jinchuuriki's scent lingered around the main house, so it hardly surprises me that the Hokage and Danzo are mixed up in this."

"That's a good thing, though. If the Hokage approves, then it can't be wrong."

Oyubi glanced sideways at Tsume. "Did it ever occur to you that one of the reasons that the jinchuuriki was never adopted by another ninja clan, despite his illustrious lineage and the Hokage's laws, is because the clan that does so will sign their own death warrant?" She laughed at Tsume's incredulous look. "No, of course not. You saw a pathetic little orphan and thought with your heart, not your head. You truly have no idea what you're getting the rest of us into."

Tsume wracked her brain some more, tugging at her scarf and cloak because she felt a sudden flush of heat. "But the seal is solid. The Kyuubi isn't going anywhere." At least, she hoped it was. The constant Kyuubi scent may indicate otherwise.

"And neither will the fear or the resentment. You're going to face that every day, you know, from friends and family alike – worse than anything you ever faced for Sakumo." Oyubi studied Tsume's face for a moment. "You're not scared to do this. You aren't scared to do anything. Well, daunting tasks have never stopped you before, and the clan has survived through worse. You wouldn't be you if you failed to defend the vulnerable misfits. Just remember that you can't go around picking fights with people who are going to hate Naruto, and that the rest of us live in this Village, too." Oyubi stepped away from the curtain and headed for her kitchen.

"That's it?" Tsume kicked her boots off and followed after.

"You wouldn't remember most of my lecture, anyway. Although it alarms me that you immediately froze when I confronted you with a belittling, demeaning tone. It gives you the appearance of weakness, and the people who'll attack a three year old will have no problem zeroing in on your weakness."

Tsume felt that wasn't quite fair. Her heart was aching – and it hurt even worse every time she thought of those wasted three years, how Naruto was made to sleep beneath the eaves of the orphanage because he didn't even deserve a _bed_. She felt uncentered and off her game, and hadn't expected Oyubi to immediately attack her heart. No wonder Sakumo ducked out so quickly – she always tried to be cheerful and upbeat whenever he was around, because she wanted him to enjoy the warmth of love and happiness. Instead, she felt conflicted, confused, happy and sad. She found herself sniffling again as her eyes watered.

"Oh, stop that, Tsume," Oyubi called from her kitchen. "Come in and have some more tea. I know you didn't pop over just to show me your latest acquisition."

Tsume wiped her eyes rapidly, peeked through the tan-colored curtains to make sure that Naruto and Kiba weren't munching on something that would kill them, and cheered up when she saw that Kuromaru was play-wrestling them in the snow. Then she followed Oyubi into the kitchen. Oyubi didn't have electricity yet or a fire currently, but she did have some seals that emitted heat. Tsume thought it was marvelous not to have any smoke interfere with other scents. Oyubi's kitchen furniture was more traditional than Tsume's, because Oyubi didn't have multiple puppies running around taste-testing everything within reach, and her walls were a cheerful butter-yellow with wooden countertops.

Oyubi didn't have any ninken – not since Himewari was killed in the Third Shinobi War, and Oyubi's ocular scent radically shifted once more. Tsume had stopped offering her replacements after being gently rebuffed for five years.

Oyubi knelt at her table, and Tsume sat crosslegged on the spare cushion.

"Oolong or darjeeling?" Oyubi asked.

"Darjeeling, please."

Oyubi poured Tsume a cup. It was hard to brew darjeeling strong, but Oyubi was an Inuzuka, so it was easily done by tripling the tea leaves and halving the water. Tsume accepted the offered cup and blew on it a few times before testing the heat. It seared the flat of her tongue, so she set it aside to cool down a little further. Oyubi brushed cookie crumbs away from the tea set, and looked mournfully at the empty plate. "So, what started your latest territorial claim?"

"Tears, believe it or not." Tsume described the events of last night and the discussion she had with Danzo – minus the details on the sex. Oyubi had made it very clear to Tsume years ago that she never wanted any details on the love lives of either her former ANBU captain or her clan leader. "And I'm right, you know, about how you can't guide a feral weapon."

"True, yes, although that little cookie monster hardly strikes me as feral."

Tsume grinned. "Naruto reminds me of a flower. He just sort of bloomed in the last twelve hours with all the right attention, and I think the fact that Kiba is willing to play with him and not be scared helps. Naruto is very affectionate." She looked at her tea for a moment, the smile dropping away. "He kinda reminds me of Minato."

"Minato liked people, even if they didn't like him back." Oyubi gave Tsume a pointed look.

"What? I liked him plenty."

"I was thinking of that last year of yours in Academy."

"Oh." Tsume took a sip of tea, wincing as it burned the roof of her mouth. "Anyway, Fugaku-san and I went to the orphanage this morning to do the adoption paperwork with the director, except the director was dead, and the orphans knew all about the jinchuuriki."

Oyubi set her teacup down and gave Tsume an incredulous look. "If the director wasn't dead when you found him, that would've been rectified by nightfall."

"I know. The Hokage wouldn't have stood for it. And the whole thing seemed fishy to me in the first place because it's the same orphanage that Kabuto came out of."

Oyubi's calm scent shifted – a spike of fear went through her. "Ah. _Him._ " Oyubi didn't clarify _him_. Oyubi was Tsume's Second, a confidant that Tsume could consult and share S rank secrets with even if Oyubi wasn't involved, even peripherally. The Hokage had granted permission for Tsume to do so, because Tsume knew that some decisions were best made by input from a trustworthy person with sound judgment, who would counter-weigh the effects of Tsume's brain injury and poor short term memory. Oyubi knew everything that Tsume knew, from Orochimaru, to ROOT, to so much more – and remembered more of it than Tsume ever could. Danzo made a lousy confidant, and Kokoro didn't have the clearance level or understanding of the Inuzuka clan's nature. Kuromaru made an excellent memory for Tsume, but he was more inclined to follow her whims and cockamamie schemes than Oyubi. And even though Oyubi had styled herself a gamma to protect herself from Inuzuka Shinzou's wrath (and continued to do so, years after Shinzou's death, because Oyubi liked to keep her cards close to her curvy chest), the crimson red of the alpha was much more appropriate for her.

"Who around here besides Danzo or Jiraiya can check seals?" Tsume asked.

The spike turned into a flare. "Do you think _he_ tampered with Minato's seal?"

"Um, no, don't think so." Although Orochimsaru was no slouch when it came to Fuuinjutsu. "It wouldn't hurt to check, now that I think about it. It's just that the Kyuubi's scent is overpowering, and I don't want it to keep blocking the other scents, so I thought maybe it had something to do with Naruto's seal." Oyubi stared at Tsume as the fear turned into surprise. Tsume stared back, and then said, "Let me guess – I'm the only one really smelling it."

Oyubi looked away. "You've always been able to detect what the rest of us couldn't."

Tsume thought of last night, when she tucked Naruto down with her children. "But Hana said she could smell fox."

"Huh. Have you tested her yet on the strength of her olfaction?"

"Yeah, last year I did. Her full olfaction is only about half of my allowed max, even though we have the same maintenance level."

Oyubi propped her chin on a fist, elbow resting on the table as she absently stirred her tea with the index finger of her other hand. "And your maintenance levels are still better than _my_ maximum," she said dryly. Tsume's maximum level – allowed or otherwise— in her adulthood weren't quite what they use to be in her childhood, but even diminished her olfaction was unmatched by anyone who wasn't Kakashi.

Oyubi licked the tea off her finger, and closed her eyes momentarily. She took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled. "Nope. I can't smell Kyuubi or fox at my maximum."

Tsume stared into her teacup. "Maybe _I_ have a seal on me."

"More than one? I don't know what to tell you, Tsume. It may be something you're stuck dealing with."

Tsume was appalled at the idea of not being able to smell everything like she once could as long as Naruto was around, and whined as she hunched. "Can't we get someone to look at his seal? That would be a lot easier."

Oyubi shrugged. "On a seal like Naruto's? No one but Jiraiya is likely to come near it, much less touch it. _I'm_ not even going to attempt anything."

And Jiraiya was unlikely to visit Konoha until the Hokage called him back for something really important, or the latest hullabaloo at the hot springs died down. Tsume remembered to blow on her tea a few times before taking a sip. "Anyway, we have to do something about the orphans, because they know too much, and they seem to think that Naruto – being the jinchuuriki – tainted them and made them impossible to adopt. The Hokage is letting me keep two of them – I'll share custody with Danzo – and then he said the clan could adopt the rest."

"And by the clan, you mean me." Oyubi sighed. "I told you that I was merely _considering_ looking at a possible adoption." Aside from body horror over the thought of pregnancy, Oyubi anticipated having issues with her sire's clan regarding any biological offspring.

Tsume pulled the papers out of her pocket and spread them out in front of Oyubi. "I know that. I just thought… Well, I figured that you should have first choice. You don't have to if you don't want to."

They both knew that Oyubi would have to though, to set an example to the other clanswomen if Tsume hoped to have any more clan adoptions. Tsume, as much as she was the Head, was also the exception to many social rules and mores. She was still the oddball and misfit. Even though many of the women were happy to embrace their sons once Tsume changed the rules and allowed them to, such a decision had still been met with disbelief and scandal.

Oyubi was the one in which people looked toward to see if Tsume's decisions were safe, instead of a forgettable whim. Gammas lacked two key characteristics of alphas – they didn't have it in themselves to be forceful, and their territory would always be limited to a small area and a small number of beloved persons. Like a dog who accepts only one master, gammas only shared their affection with one or two persons. Oyubi's alpha nature was chained by her Curse of Hatred. Between her Clan Head, her former ANBU captain, and her baby brother, Oyubi maxed out her quota of individual precious persons, and had no desire to expand her territory beyond her role as a Konoha nin. After the loss of her ninken, the Curse of Darkness strangled any potential for Oyubi's scope of territory to widen. She was satisfied with her lot in life.

Tsume, as an alpha unhindered by Uchiha genes, considered anything and everything in her large territory _hers_ , even if she didn't particularly like what or who was in her territory. In a roundabout way, Tsume's idea of territory covered the whole of Konoha. So Fugaku, whether he liked it or not, even if he was also a Clan Head and also Chief of Police, was _hers_ to give a hard time, and to support, and to back up, and to needle when the mood struck her. Ancestors preserve her if Fugaku ever realized that Tsume's regard for him was like a toddler jealously possessive of her toys.

Oyubi didn't like to tell others what to do any more than she liked making others do what needed to be done. The clan would've fallen apart without the strength of alphas keeping the Pack together, because alphas didn't lead so much as they _herded_. Oyubi also wasn't inclined to be possessive of the entire clan that Tsume was – Tsume considered it _hers_ , not _ours_ , and was aggressive in protecting everything that she considered _hers_. But Oyubi's prudence more than made up for that, replacing that which Madara destroyed in the Nara Forest. Together, they made a singular, very formidable, alpha leader.

Oyubi sifted through the papers. "Most of these are boys."

Tsume twiddled her thumbs and hunched over. "I know. People like to adopt adorable little girls, I guess."

Oyubi pulled one set free, and handed the rest back to Tsume. "I like this one's name. It has a good ring to it. And he appears to be old enough to be potty-trained, at least."

Tsume craned her neck. "Who did you pick?"

"Rock Lee."

"Huh. The name does have a good ring to it. I bet that he'll be a fine, strong son to have, Oyubi! Congratulations!"

"I'm sure that he'll be as strong as his name hints. Strong, steadfast, silent. Good qualities that any mother would want for her son." And a good thing in general. Oyubi's baby brother, young enough to be her son, was _not_ silent – no one doubted that he had certainly inherited the outgoing Inuzuka nature and subsequent noise level, much to the horror of his Uchiha clanmates.

oOoOoOo

By the time that Oyubi had helped Tsume sort through the clanswomen who would be likeliest to adopt, it was nearly lunchtime. Kiba, Naruto, and Kuromaru popped into the house a few times to use the bathroom, fetch some drinks of water, and raid Oyubi's _other_ cookie supply (a secret stash that Kiba uncovered with his nose), but were otherwise content to stay outside and build the snow fort that Kiba had proposed. Tsume kept her nose open, ready to aggressively ambush if Hyuuga Hiro decided to step outside of her house to talk to the boys. She felt nothing but relief when his smug scent left her compound, accompanied by Fugaku (who stank of bitter rage). The Hokage seemed content to remain in Tsume's kitchen and work on papers for a little longer, with the occasional interruption from various messengers.

Danzo came to Oyubi's house, dressed once more in his clothes from last night. He sat on the floor between Oyubi and Tsume, refusing the cushion that Oyubi offered. "Here's the custody plan that I have in mind," he began without any preamble as he accepted the cup of Darjeeling-flavored cream from Oyubi. "Weekdays with me – I'll provide for the children's schooling, meals, clothing, shelter, and training – and they will have weekends with you when you're not gone on missions."

"I have the right to pop in and out during the week as I so chose, if I'm available," Tsume told him. He gave her a flat look over the rim of his mug that Tsume instantly recognized – _I couldn't keep your nose away even if I tried._ "And the option for group sleepovers during the week at wherever you've got them… planted."

His lips thinned as he pressed them tightly together. "You already do group sleepovers."

"And surprise field trips, so they don't develop an allergy to the sun."

He choked on his tea-cream, and then pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oyubi-san…"

"Don't look at me, Captain. I won't be of much use for talking Tsume out of this latest scheme of hers, not when I'm getting dragged into it." Oyubi's smile was wry and her scent amused as she waved the adoption papers for Rock Lee in the air. "You know as well as I do that dogs have a habit of getting into gardens and digging holes everywhere. And if she doesn't bury the bone, she'll just gnaw on it all day."

It's a good thing that Tsume didn't mention her latest plan of surprise birthday parties. Best to keep that one on reserve.

He glared at Oyubi, who covered up her wince and the whitening of her knuckles by taking a long sip of tea. Once an ANBU captain and subordinate, always an ANBU captain and subordinate. Those who survived beneath Danzo's direct command held him in high esteem and respect – although trust was a quality that few retained. He turned back to Tsume. "I hope you realize the long-term repercussions of your behaviors." His voice was weary and long-suffering.

Tsume thought of the surrounding darkness that Sakumo had bluntly warned her about, back when he stood on the edge of the void and she hadn't realized it. (" _Your fearlessness will take you down dark, lonely paths of other hearts, but it may be enough to herd them back to the light. Especially Danzo. That idiot has long been lost and fumbling in the dark.")_ "I know." The void was a dark, unforgiving, cold place, but she would always try filling it with things and people she loved that would love her back. Such would always be the difference between her and Danzo, even though both had embraced that void. Danzo filled it with things that he didn't want to see the light of day, allowing the worst of human depravities to stare back at him. She almost wished that Orochimaru had had a talk with Danzo the way that Orochimaru had talked to her. Then Tsume wished, not for the first time, that Orochimaru had listened to his own advice. "So, how did it go between the Assistant Head of Internal Affairs and Pencil-Dick?"

Danzo set his tea on the table and stirred it with a finger. "Well, as far as Internal Affairs in concerned, he decided that no error was ever made, as the Uchiha Police kept an appropriate, hands-off distance. He said that clearly they were very skilled at such, since the former director had been able to so boldly and successfully break the Hokage's law."

"Oh, oh! I know what that is!" Tsume wiggled around her seat and waved her hand in the air. "That's like the smile that hides the teeth you were telling me about last week." The Uchiha Police had been essentially praised for allowing child abuse and disobedience of the Hokage's law to occur… Well, _shit._ Tsume felt a jolt rush down her spine as she realized how pissed off Fugaku was to be _congratulated_ for _corruption_. She cringed at the thought of steam pouring from his ears for the deliberate smirch against his clan's honor. No wonder he had been fuming!

"Yes." Danzo seemed far too pleased with himself. "Subtle undermining insults that tear at self-esteem and assurance, planting seeds of doubt and resentment."

Oyubi set her tea down with a disgusted sigh, and Danzo tilted his head at her. "What?" she asked defensively.

"You don't like what you see or hear regarding the Uchiha clan."

Oyubi held her back straight; her black-eyed gaze nearly burned a hole through her table as she stared intently at her teacup. "I am Inuzuka."

Danzo's voice was amused and casual. "Yes indeed. Inuzuka through and through – with your sire's bloodline limit. A truly unique and useful combination of senses that you've always chosen not to use. You Inuzuka women, even the beta, are possessive of what you feel is your own, and you've always had a special kinship with the Uchiha clan that... _most_ of the Inuzuka lack." He glanced sideways at Tsume as his scent shifted once more – it carried a hint of regret.

Tsume rubbed her nose; it was itching from the Kyuubi's prevalent scent and Oyubi's simmering resentment. She thought about how Fugaku chafed under the thumb of the Assistant Head of Internal Affairs. She pushed down the sudden urge to smash her teacup. "You know, the Uchiha are getting really unhappy with all this subtle undermining insults and shit."

Danzo sipped his tea – mostly to hide the smile that hid his teeth. "And your blatant smiles and aggression is any better?"

Tsume guarded her territory ferociously. The clan and its compound were _hers_. All of it belonged to her by right of nature and tradition. She had been furious that Fugaku would dare to challenge and undermine her authority by invaded her compound without permission, and then _planting_ a guard outside her door, _in her own tree_. Honestly, Pencil-Dick knew better than to try to get away with anything around her nose! "Well, Fugaku should've known better than to come storming into my compound to try and intimidate me, no matter what crime I may have committed recently. But that's not the point, Danzo. I know you don't trust the Uchiha any further than you could throw them, but you can throw a person a great distance still." _Or kick them,_ she silently added, remembering the spar that she and Danzo had last summer when the Hokage was too busy to keep his weekly session with Danzo. Her ribs ached in remembered pain. "You're trying to corner them, and the Uchiha are going to lunge for your throat the moment they think they're trapped."

Danzo studied Tsume with a flat lizard-like expression and a glint in his eye. "Where are you going with this?" he asked in a low whisper.

Tsume finished her tea. "I don't know," she replied with all honesty. Fugaku had personally carried all four children whose feet they had to wrap to protect against the cold. His face had been stern and his words impersonal, but his arms had been open and gentle. Fugaku had even (grudgingly) invited Tsume and all of her children over for dinner next week, so Mikoto could meet Tsume's newest acquisition. ( _"She would be pleased to see you again. She says that you don't visit her as often as you used to._ ") He may not like Tsume, but he never tried to interfere with her friendship with Mikoto.

"I think," Tsume began, as she stood, "that you can't treat the entire Uchiha clan like they're clones of Uchiha Madara or Uchiha Obito, ready to go off the deep end and destroy Konoha at the first chance they've got. I don't think that's what Kagami meant when he told us about the Curse of Hatred."

Danzo's eye narrowed as his dark scent shifted again, coiling tightly.

"Gotta go," Tsume said with a wave over her shoulder. She left before Danzo could say anything else, haphazardly throwing on her outdoor clothes before exiting Oyubi's warm house, because there was only so much of the dark, lonely paths she was willing to walk.

One of these days, Danzo might finally accept the love and puppies that she'd been throwing into his void.

Tsume brightened as she hurriedly stuffed her hands into her gloves, and dodged a clumsy snowball that Kiba threw at her. Then she laughed as she grabbed Naruto up and swung him through the air.

There was always more room for sunshine and dandelion fluff in the void.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hohohohoho! Three guesses as to who Oyubi's baby brother is. >:D


	28. Delta Years - Chapter Eight

“Order! ORDER!” Tsume banged her fist against the flat side of Oyubi’s table until the din finally hushed. She found herself on the receiving end of multiple resentful glares, and held her chin high. “I did it, and I’m not taking it back.” _I am Queen Alpha Bitch. My word is law._ It was a little difficult to establish her claim, however, when she wasn’t willing to rule with the iron fist that Shinzou had so readily used.

It was one thing for an alpha to make decisions, but it was another to explain them. A clan-wide meeting was hastily assembled after lunch, with all the available adults-or-close-enough crammed into Oyubi’s kitchen. Clan-wide meetings usually meant all the children as well, but this involved the Hokage’s decree, and thus had to be limited to those who were in the know. This meant that the oldest children remained, undisturbed, at school. Children too young to be in the Academy remained in the care and supervision of whoever was on shift. Kiba and Naruto were currently babysitting Kakashi with nine puppies and Aunt Natsumi. Two puppies roamed Oyubi’s kitchen, interacting with the other ninken. Yamato sat at the left of Tsume, stifling a yawn. He jerked awake before he could face-plant in his tea.

Of the thirty-seven adult Inuzuka women remaining after the Kyuubi’s attack, only twenty had been able to make the meeting. The rest were on missions or caring for the clan’s children. Of the twenty present, Tsume was one of three alphas. There were four gammas, and the rest were betas. Yamato was the only male human present. It was a tight fit with everyone in Oyubi’s kitchen, which was why the ninken were lounging in Oyubi’s living room, with the oldest and fiercest commandeering Oyubi’s couch.

Tsume kept her eyes on the gammas – Megumi, Akahana, Ume, and Aunt Bashira. Aunt Bashira didn’t care – she was always far more amused, instead of offended or challenged by Tsume, given the weight of her own years and experience. The other three were known to butt heads with her, especially Megumi, who was eighteen years older than Tsume.

Megumi moaned and covered her face with her hand. “How could you do this to our clan, Tsume?” Megumi had lost her two daughters in the Kyuubi’s attack, left to care for three young granddaughters below the age of five at the time. “The orphanage was lucky to get anyone to come and do repairs, and only because the Hokage made the orders himself.”

“Yeah,” Kashin, a seventeen year old alpha, nodded her head in agreement. “They’ve also had a hard time getting shopkeepers to donate goods, like toys and clothes. IA had to look into people last year when Danzo heard that the shopkeepers were inflating their food prices to the orphanage after its budget was expanded. Kagami himself followed up.” It was rare for the Head of Internal Affairs to do any legwork – his heart wasn’t able to keep up with the demands of stamina anymore, even if stamina meant a slow walk a kilometer long.

Huh. Now Tsume felt kinda bad that she thought Danzo and the council lied about expanding the orphanage’s budget when she had seen how rundown the building looked. Gosh, no wonder the children thought they were tainted!

“Oh,” Megumi added casually, scratching an ear, “and someone spray-painted the back wall of our compound. Something about death to traitors and demons.”

In a village like Konoha, there were secrets, and then there were Secrets. It was a secret that Tsume had adopted the jinchuuriki, which meant that it wasn’t a secret after Hyuuga Hiro left her home, and word subsequently spread like a wildfire in the last two hours. The Inuzuka clan – especially Tsume – could always be counted on as a reliable _cause_ of entertaining gossip or juicy scandal.

The Hokage had told Tsume very firmly, before gathering his papers and heading for his tower when one of the advisors promised a hot lunch, that it was a Secret that Minato was Naruto’s father. Minato had made too many enemies, and the combination of being the Fourth’s legacy _and_ the jinchuuriki would make Naruto a very tempting target to many powerful and quite resentful enemies, especially considering the recently foiled attempt to kidnap the Hyuuga heir. Hence, Tsume wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, even if she thought the persons already knew, and even if most of the adults in her clan could tell who had sex with who.

(Tsume wondered how she was going to keep such a Secret. Between the bright blue eyes and the fluffy blond hair, a person didn’t need an Inuzuka nose to notice the family resemblance to Namikaze Minato. She hoped that the Hokage had just given her covert permission to dye Naruto’s hair – something like a rich, glorious red, like maple leaves in autumn – in order to maintain the Secret. She always did like red better than yellow, anyway…)

“I’ll track the vandal down later,” Tsume promised Megumi.

“Oh, I already took care of the vandal,” Aunt Bashira declared with a wicked grin. “A fresh, long dip in the Naka River does wonders at removing paint. And once the hospital resolves the hypothermia, he’ll be back to repaint the fence.”

“Look,” Tsume said, spreading her hands wide, “most of us remember Kushina.” The Hokage _hadn’t_ said that Kushina’s maternity was a Secret, especially given how Kushina had been the only Uzumaki refugee-turned-ninja to stick around in Konoha decades after Uzu was destroyed. “Naruto is Kushina’s son, and I couldn’t let him go back to that place. No child, not even the jinchuuriki, should be found naked in the kennels in the middle of the cold night we had.”

There was a shift in the surrounding scent – several thought that the kennels were a perfectly suitable place for the jinchuuriki to be kept. Admittedly, Tsume had spent many a night in the kennels when her grandmother was alive, but at least she was able to keep the clothes on her back, and it hadn’t been in the middle of winter. She had to remind herself that none of them had seen the bloody footprints, caused by an adult whose only response to seeing a naked three year old in deathly-frigid cold was to throw a glass bottle at the child. And as soon as she was done with this meeting, she was going to hunt down Fugaku and lead him straight to the culprit. “All right then, what would _you_ have done?” she asked Megumi. “Make an attempt to kill him and accidentally release the Kyuubi? Leave him there? Come on, what would _any_ of you have done in my stead?”

Akahana raised her hand after a moment of silence. “Okay, I’ll admit that if I found the jinchuuriki naked in the kennels, I would’ve bundled him up and delivered him back to the orphanage.”

“Why? That’s like trying to cover up a stink by dumping perfume on it. It wouldn’t fix the problem, and it would still smell like shit!”

Ume, an outspoken and defiant beta, glared and crossed her arms. “I wasn’t aware that the jinchuuriki should even be a problem. He’s nothing more than a meat suit for the Kyuubi.”

Tsume flashed her teeth at Ume, gratified that it made her older cousin flinch and look away. “You were hurt by the Kyuubi. I get that – we _all_ lost loved ones that day.”

Megumi cast a resentful look at Yamato. “But none of _your_ loved ones were your children. All of _yours_ are still alive.”

Tsume bit her tongue and dug her claws into Oyubi’s table. Oyubi’s table was littered with claw marks; it was barely noticeable. _Everyone is mine._ The clan children had been _hers_. She had played with the adults when they were children, had helped care for the adults’ children and loved and protected them as their alpha. The guilt for not being well enough to join the fight, that she maybe could’ve made a difference before Minato had pulled the Kyuubi out of the village, gnawed at her insides. “And Naruto’s loved ones are dead, too – killed for saving Konoha.” She had loved Minato and Kushina as much as she loved her clan, and their loss had been every bit as painful as the loss of her clanswoman.

Megumi dropped her eyes at the unspoken reminder of Naruto’s sire.

A memory flashed through Tsume’s mind – the darkness of the earthen pit, the feel of Danzo’s hands against her naked flesh, and the crackling sound of the fire. She remembered the scent of Danzo’s desire and confusion, the wonder and jealousy as he looked at her.

_(“You know, Grandmother told me I should hate the Uchiha for what he did. But I can’t hate this Madara. I don’t even know if I could hate Grandmother. I think…. I think it’s hard for me to feel hatred, almost like I can’t feel fear, you know. Are the two things connected, hate and fear?”_

_“We often hate what we fear. If you cannot fear, I imagine that leaves little to hate. What must it be like, to live without such burdens of fear or hatred?”)_

Tsume suddenly realized that it wasn’t that her clan hated the Kyuubi, but that they feared it. Or at least it had started out as fear. In her outsider experience, people had three choices with fear: let it cripple them, release it and move on, or turn fear into anger and hatred (an easy task when you’re a ninja who weaponizes weaknesses). For all that Tsume could see and smell fear, the only understanding she had of it was a distant memory of a nightmare she awoke from, only a few months before her brain injury forever stole the ability. She didn’t even think that she felt true fear when she had been on the brink of losing Kiba. But she understood anger.

To win her clan over, Tsume would have to dispel the fears that were born three ago, from dead flesh and broken buildings. She had to separate the Kyuubi from Naruto.

“I remember,” Tsume said, “how much it hurt when I was twelve years old, when Grandmother said it was my fault that my mother died. The only thing I ever did was be born.” The older Inuzuka women who remembered Shinzou in all her bitter glory, shifted about and glanced at each other. Aunt Bashira sighed and nodded her head, her memory being almost as long as Aunt Natsumi’s, since she was a teenager when Konoha was created. Shinzou had despised Aunt Bashira’s daughter almost as much as she had despised Tsume. “Naruto is not to blame for being born – he _isn’t_ the Kyuubi. That’s like saying that the Sage of Six Paths was the Juubi, and we know that isn’t true. We all know that when we’re pregnant with a baby, we don’t _become_ that baby, because we’re separate beings. Naruto is no different.”

A murmur rippled through the betas. The gammas stirred, restlessly. The two alphas were quiet, waiting to see where Tsume would take this.

Tsume traced the new scratches in Oyubi’s table. “I’m not asking for anyone’s permission,” she said. “I’m not even looking for your blessing. The Hokage said that the Fourth wanted Naruto to be treated like a hero – that’s too much of a burden for someone as young as Naruto, though. He’s only a few months younger than Kiba.” Kiba had actually been due the middle of September. They would’ve been closer in age, if not for that deliberate strike against her abdomen… Tsume tore her mind away from the lingering past. “He should be treated like any other child – with love.”

“How will this affect the rest of us?” Megumi demanded. “You adopt the jinchuuriki, and it’s _our_ wall that gets spray-painted.” _My wall,_ Tsume thought, suppressing a growl. “The orphanage suffered for having Naruto – and we already have problems enough getting decent weapons because of Sakumo. How much extra are we going to be paying for food, now? And that doesn’t include the fact that we’re going to be considered siding with the Kyuubi.”

Tsume pushed her irritation down as the murmurs took on a different characteristic. “We’ll keep together, hold a unified front. I’ve already got lots of people on my side – the Uchiha and the Nara clans.” Okay, so maybe not the Uchiha clan, but Tsume figured that she could work on Fugaku and Makoto, and the rest would eventually fall into place. Kagami, she knew, would _definitely_ side with her. “I have full support and backing from the Hokage, and I bet we could even get most of ANBU to side with us.” She nudged Yamato as his head dropped to his shoulder.

Yamato snapped awake, blinking. “Hmm? Whazza? Yeah, sure.” He raised a fist in the air in a show of sodality. “Huzza. Support all the way.”

Kashin regarded Tsume with a neutral expression. “Who was the jinchuuriki before Naruto?”

That was… that was a really good question, especially when there _had_ to have been one – right? (Apparently so, if the sudden spike of fear from Oyubi was any clue.) “Don’t know.”

“If we weren’t worried about the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki before Naruto, why are we worried after?”

Also a very good question. Tsume eyed Kashin suspiciously, because Kashin skulked through the shadows, more of a scavenger than a predator, which was hardly becoming of an alpha. Then again, Kashin was also more likely to align herself with the winning party, so that meant that Tsume could win this with most of her dignity and respect still intact.

“Minato was a responsible person,” Kashin added, her gaze distant. “He saved Konoha, even if he couldn’t protect everyone that day. I don’t think he would’ve saved our lives just to endanger them all over again with the Kyuubi. So if Tsume trusts the seal, then I will trust her.”

Tsume listened to the murmurs of reluctant agreement around them. Megumi and Akahana turned their faces way – silent, but not agreeable. She anticipated problems with them in the future, but decided that would just have to be addressed when it ever came up. She nodded her head firmly. “Exactly,” she said. “Between the Third and the Fourth Hokages, I feel confident in saying that Naruto is as harmless as any three year old pup out there.”

Tsume snapped her fingers at Oyubi. “And speaking of three year olds…” Oyubi placed a stack of papers on the table beside Tsume. “Naruto wound up in the kennels, naked and starving, because there weren’t any living adult caretakers at the orphanage. And the caretakers were doing a pretty lousy job too when they were alive, just so you know. So the Hokage is turning the entire orphanage over to my care, and I’ve decided that _we_ are going to adopt all the orphans. Luckily, Hokage-sama is giving us the orphanage’s fund for the next two years.”

oOoOoOo

It took some fancy talking before anyone made any decisions. Ume, who had lost her only daughter during the Kyuubi attack, surprised Tsume by being the first to step forward. She adopted two boys.

“I like the idea,” she told Tsume. “I couldn’t keep the son that Grandmother Shinzou made the trader take back, and I often wonder where he is today. He was born a year before you…” Ume chose not to have any more children until after Shinzou’s death, but by then it had been too late to have a successful pregnancy. “Minato was a good man. He saved Tomo’s life once, back in the Third War. Because of him, I had three extra years with her before I lost her completely.” 

“I’ll take this girl,” said Aoi, who had adopted three clangirls when their mothers were killed by the Kyuubi. She waved the paperwork in the air. “I like even numbers, and there’s something appealing about her name – Tenten.”

“That’s even-numbered, all right,” Akahana said, before choosing the youngest of the orphans – the female toddler. She had two sons naturally that she had chosen to keep, since their fathers were foreign shinobi – Akahana often said that she’d rather not have _any_ sons, but refused to give any offspring away to enemies.

Tsume scribbled some numbers on a piece of paper as she tried to figure out how to increase the monthly allotment for childcare. Most kunoichi were faced with a difficult decision – continue with their career or settle down to become mothers and housewives. It was a pressure (and often mandatory duty) of several clans. Mikoto-chan had been pressured mostly because she was the wife of the Uchiha Clan Head; most Uchiha women were able to continue their careers after a stint of child-bearing and -rearing. On the other hand, Mikoto quickly became Second in the Mothers Defense League, so she wasn’t just sitting around being a housewife. The Hyuuga required the wives of the main house to retire once they became pregnant.

It wasn’t unusual for an Inuzuka woman to have six to eight viable pregnancies in their lifetime. It was a necessity, considering the clan’s average death rate and heretofore discharge of sons – children were their lifeblood. Childcare was a communal duty of the entire clan. Kunoichi who were pregnant or nursing would do stints with running the nursery or live-in daycares, earning a stipend during the time they were unable to accept any missions. Babies were typically weaned between eight and ten months, and their mothers resumed missions as the childcare was absorbed by the clan.

A core staff of Inuzuka women – those who were too old, forced into retirement from crippling injuries, or generally unsuited to become a kunoichi – ran most of the day-to-day needs in the compound, like minor repairs and childcare. They also received a stipend from the clan’s general fund. If Sakumo had never covered the expense of Tsume’s last year in the Academy, she would’ve eventually become a primary child caregiver, although she doubted she would’ve received a decent stipend.

With the addition of the orphans, Tsume could see that she was going to need to increase the allotment. There were now officially forty Inuzuka children under the age of eight who were not in the Academy.

After some extra finagling with the finances and ledgers, Tsume realized that she was going to visit Uchiha Itachi – er, Mikoto next week with her accounts on tow, again. The orphanage’s budget seemed incredibly generous to Tsume (she didn’t get to see money come in such large numbers very often, but knew enough to be impressed by that many zeros trailing the first number), but she had the sneaking suspicion that prices were going to get jacked. Hmm. Good thing she was sort-of-kinda friends-in-the-loosest-terms with the Uchiha Police Force and the semi-retired Head of Internal Affairs. Or at least as much a friend as you could be to the police when you were intimately familiar with every nook, cranny, and cleaning product of their building.

Despite the looming financial worries, Tsume still smiled at her cousins and aunts as the stack of papers dwindled and were divided amongst them, pleased that no one would be unwanted that day. No one should _ever_ be unwanted, Tsume decided – unless it was Orochimaru, because he downright deserved it, the creepy bastard.

The smile fell away as the last of her family left, leaving her with Kuromaru, Yamato, and Oyubi. She leaned against her son and drew in a deep breath. 

“Sleepy,” he murmured, chin dropping towards his chest.

“I know. Back to bed, then. Thanks for waking up and joining us at the meeting.” She accompanied him from Oyubi’s kitchen and across the way to their house. The kitchen was cool as they entered. As Yamato stumbled off to bed once more, Tsume fed the fire. Then she settled down on the couch, brushed loose cushion fluff off one of the couch arms, and studied the crackling flames.

Tsume thought of Kushina’s brilliant red hair, alit like dawn’s color across the skylines. She remembered the bright spotlight on the crystals that had been woven into the red hair, remembered the way it fanned out beneath Kushina as she spiraled upside-down on the long curtain of aerial silk. The memories hurt and the pain hadn’t lessened because she adopted Kushina’s son.

“I’m doing all right, aren’t I?” she asked the fire, because it was red like Kushina’s hair. The fire crackled back. Tsume tried to push down the regret and guilt once more – better late than never, she had once told Minato in the Third War.

( _“You’re just saying that because you aren’t the one dangling by his toes in this damn trap. Now, um, can you let me down before my team sees this? And just where did you get the glitter and glue? I thought the Fire Daimyo had banned you from all the craft stores in the country.”)_

She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes as Kakashi entered her living room and carefully looked around. “All alone?” he asked carefully with his shoulders hunched forward.

“Sakumo’s gone. He left after the Assistant Head of IA showed up.”

Kakashi looked better as he kicked snow off the bedroom bunny slippers that Aunt Natsumi must’ve made him wear before releasing him from her custody. He also still wore the pajamas – wrinkled and stale with sweat – that Tsume had discarded last night. His scent was heavy with embarrassment and shame as he sprawled boneless on the couch beside Tsume. His color was better than the pasty-white and feverish red that she had seen last night, and the infection smelled like it was under control now with judicious application of antibiotics and proper wound care. He still looked like he had missed a week of meals, so Tsume considered making him a late lunch. 

“So, I guess I missed a lot today,” Kakashi said, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. His hand shook slightly from exhaustion and illness.

“You should’ve missed all of it by going to the hospital last night,” Tsume replied caustically. Her smile eased the bite of her words.

“Yeah, I know. In my defense, the fever made it hard to think.”

Tsume leaned sideways and rested her cheek against his shoulder. She took a deep breath, and reveled in all the familiar scents. He smelled of Hatake, Inuzuka, and faintly of Obito, before Obito’s scent twisted with corruption. “I love you,” she whispered, as a little voice happily hummed _mine_. _My puppy. My son._ “You were my first – you’ll always be my first.” Not her favorite – Tsume loved all of her children with the same passion and ardor, and would never be able to pick which one she liked the most – but she and Kakashi had a history that couldn’t be duplicated with her other children; a history of triumph and tears as children growing up together to become adults while still somehow having that sense of mother and son.

Like Tsume, Kakashi was forced to mature too early and too fast. Unlike Tsume, he was the pinnacle of perfect breeding, the results of generations of Inuzuka women carefully choosing the sire of their offspring. Life had dealt both of them a rotten hand from a stacked deck of cards, but they were shinobi – cheating was the name of the game, as Minato had once told Kushina during the Second War.

Kakashi patted her arm. “I love you too,” he mumbled after a moment of making sure that no one else was in hearing. He reluctantly allowed her to wrap her arms around him for a warm cuddle.

oOoOoOo

Two days later, the weather warmed up enough that Tsume felt the risk of frostbite was minimal enough to let the children out to play for longer periods of time. “Shall we go to the playground?” she asked Kiba and Naruto after Kabuto and Hana were waved off to the Academy. Besides, she was due to pop in on Danzo and the other children tomorrow and decided it would be good just to spend the day bonding with her littlest boys before introducing more foster children to the mix.

Kiba began jumping up and down. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

After a heartbeat of hesitation, Naruto imitated Kiba in action and volume. It took Tsume an hour to get the boys bundled up, snacks prepared and made, boys unbundled to use the potty, bundled up once more, and then a fresh set of snacks made because the boys got hungry and ate the first set, before they delivered the eleven puppies to Oyubi for her to assume care. Oyubi, her hair in as much disarray as her house, quietly accepted the dogs as the sound of a vase shattering in the next room was heard.

A sheepish, “Oopsy,” was heard. A mop of black hair and a pair of sorry eyes peered around the corner. “Sorry.”

Oyubi hid her cringe well. “Any bleeding or life-threatening emergencies?”

“No, mom. PUPPIES! I LOVE PUPPIES!” There was a shriek of laughter, and the bundle of energy named Rock Lee pounced on the puppies. The puppies eagerly pounced back.

“That should keep him busy long enough for me to take a quick shower,” Oyubi said, looking lean and desperate. “He’s almost as bad of my brother!” Wooooo. That was saying something. So much for hoping that Oyubi would have a calm, steady son.

The snow was slushy and the surrounding buildings seemed dark and dull without the pristine white covering all of Konoha’s loveable flaws. The streets were bustling with more activity since the cold snap had eased up, and several of the shopkeepers greeted Tsume warmly, because they were old friends of Aunt Natsumi whom Tsume paid to keep covered plates of fresh food available for Sakumo just off their back doorsteps.

Naruto, bundled in his orange parka and beanie, and a beige-colored knit scarf wrapped around his neck, was unrecognizable to most of the passersby. That didn’t stop many from eyeing Tsume and the boys with barely-restrained malignancy, because they didn’t have to recognize the jinchuuriki when they already knew Tsume had him.

The playground was just a stone’s throw away from the Academy. Its equipment was smaller-scaled versions of the Academy’s obstacle course, and it was a favorite area for mothers and fathers to bring their children. Shinobi parents often scoped out the offspring in the other clans, plotting how to best arrange seating and classroom placements to obtain better genin team arrangements and future partnerships. Civilians would do the same, hoping to create allies and friendships when the time came to enroll their child. Konoha’s Academy accepted anyone who desired to become a ninja, regardless of clan, custom, or class (and sometimes country, since Kushina had come from Whirlpool), but it never hurt to have support and sponsorship from the famous and strong.

The civilians were also more blatant in their distrust and dislike of Tsume’s decision. Most of the shinobi clans – partly because they were usually related in some fashion to the Inuzuka clan, and partly because the Inuzuka clan had a well-deserved reputation for being loyal and trustworthy to Konohagakure and all who dwelled within its great walls – decided to take a distant wait-and-watch approach when it came to Tsume… so long as she stayed away from them, of course. Tsume had a reputation for making rash decisions that often caused more damage than was necessary.

There weren’t too many people present; most families opted to remain indoors even with the improving weather. When Tsume, Naruto, and Kiba arrived on the playground, the three adults from the shinobi clans subtly and carefully nudged their children away. The five civilians were more blatant, snatching up their children and quieting loud protests with harsh words and pinches.

The playground was very quickly abandoned.

Tsume pretended not to notice as she commandeered a recently-vacated bench, covering its cold wooden slates with a wool blanket that Kuromaru had reminded her to bring. She and Kuromaru settled down on the blanket; Kuromaru rested his head on her lap and she set the covered basket with its snacks off to the side. Then Tsume gave Naruto and Kiba practice kunai (tips carefully blunted and rounded to prevent someone from accidentally losing an eye or other important body part), and told them to go play. Naruto and Kiba ran shrieking for the swings.

As Kiba and Naruto decided to go down the slides, belly-first, Tsume half-expected a tumbleweed to blow across the otherwise empty-playground, and lonely harmonica music to play on the distant wind. She knew that Naruto’s playground debut would be somewhat awkward, but hadn’t imagined anything like this.

“Gosh,” Tsume told Kuromaru, “this sucks. I feel like we have the measles or something.”

Kuromaru shifted his head so she could scratch him behind the ears. “Maybe they think the Kyuubi is catching,” he muttered, too low for any eavesdroppers to catch.

“Naruto’s smile is contagious,” Tsume said knowingly. Naruto was quickly becoming a darling with some of the younger Inuzuka teenagers, so she figured there was hope for everyone. She sniffed the air for a moment, and then gently pushed Kuromaru’s head off her lap. “Excuse me for a moment – make sure the kids don’t blow up the merry-go-round or something while I’m gone.” She snuck around the parameters of the playground, ducked over the wall, and hid behind a bare bush.

Yamanaka Inoichi laughed as his daughter, too energetic from being cooped up in the flower shop for the last three days, tugged incessantly on his hand. “Come on! We have to hurry!” Ino insisted. “All the good swings will be gone!” She was also tugging Shikamaru along. “Yay! We’re here!” When they rounded the wall that separated the playground from the Academy grounds, Ino screamed with laughter and dropped the hands she was holding. She tried to make a dash for the swing set when they came into sight. 

Inoichi grabbed her and pulled her back when he saw the only two occupants on the playground. “Wait.” He carefully edged her back behind his legs. “I think we should go to the café and get some hot chocolate. You like hot chocolate, don’t you, darling?”

Shikamaru glanced sideways at Inoichi as Ino pouted and stamped her foot. “No! I want to swing!”

“It’s not safe here—grrk!”

Inoichi choked as Tsume ambushed him from behind, throwing a tight left arm around his neck and sliding her other arm through his right to pin it back and away from his kunai pouch. “Hi, how’s it going?” she demanded with a smile and a loud voice. “Isn’t it great that you should join us on this fine day? Look – we have the playground all to ourselves. The children will love playing together.”

Ino, taking advantage of her father’s grip loosening on the back of her coat, hurried forward through the slushy snow. “Yay!” Shikamaru took one look at his aunt and followed after Ino, knowing which one was the lesser of two evils. After all, the Nara Clan had a much better sense of self-preservation than the Inuzuka Clan generally did. That, and Tsume gave Shikamaru amazing butterscotch cookies, which made Tsume the better adult in Shikamaru’s world.

When Inoichi remained silent, Tsume tightened the arm around his neck. “You’re not going to duck out of here, are you?”

Inoichi gasped for breath.

“Because you _know_ that there are some things even scarier than a three year old toddler.” Tsume wasn’t necessarily _feared_ by her brother or his teammates, except… well, Inoichi once likened Shikaku’s younger sister to an avalanche; safe to watch from a great distance away, but inescapable and exceedingly frightening when right on top of you. She hooked a leg around his knee, just to emphasis just how much on top she totally was.

Ino climbed into one of the seats on the swing and yelled at Shikamaru to push her.

“I will!” Naruto called, hurrying over to shove her with all his might. He held on to the swing at the same time and dragged his feet, laughing. Ino twisted around so she could punch Naruto in the head.

“Leggo! I wanted Shiki to push!”

“I wanna! I wanna!”

“They’re having fun,” Tsume whispered in Inoichi’s ear. “Play is always better when you have more people involved. Besides, no one is going to get hurt any more than they normally would on a playground.”

Tsume dragged Inoichi with her to the park bench where Kuromaru was patiently awaiting. She lightened the grip around his throat just enough to keep him from passing out. Inoichi reluctantly accepted a seat beside Kuromaru, and Tsume deliberately sat on the other side, pinning Inoichi in place between her and the ninken. After a moment, she nudged Inoichi with her elbow. “Don’t worry,” she added, trying to sound gentle, “Naruto’s a good kid. He won’t hurt Ino-chan.”

Ino managed to bop Naruto solidly on the head so he could release the swing. Naruto, holding his head and crying, ran to Tsume. Kiba threw a slushball at Ino for hitting Naruto, and she shrieked as it struck the back of her neck and dribbled down her collar. Shikamaru flopped backwards and made a half-hearted attempt at a snow-angel. Tsume bet it was mostly to look like he was busy so he could stare at the clouds like his father did.

Inoichi tensed up at Naruto’s approach. Naruto buried his face against Tsume’s knee, so she patted his fluffy blond hair. “You’re fine,” she told him, feeling her heart swell in her chest as the hurt at the earlier playground rejections diminished. “No harm, no foul. Why don’t you play with your cousin, Shikamaru? He’s looking kinda lonely over there by the slides.”

Naruto perked up, tears all but forgotten. “Okay!” He ran and pounced on Shikamaru.

When the children were outside of hearing, Inoichi said, “How can you be sure? You’ve collected enough dangerous pets and objects over the years – come meet my friend, you told us. He’s a nice horse that lives in the Nara Forest, you said. _I_ was damn near trampled, _Chouza_ has a scar where that monster drew blood, and I’ve never seen your brother climb a tree that fast. Or move that fast at all by his own accord. Let’s not forget the lovely Suna puppet that nearly killed me with a ten-year old poisoned senbon. Thank the gods that the potency of that poison diminished in the last decade. So how can I expect _this_ to be any safer?” 

To be fair to Juubi, Chouza _had_ offered him a sugar cube, and then retracted his arm before Juubi could get it. Tsume would bite someone for that, too. Inoichi’s hair probably looked like straw… and, yeah, she couldn’t think of an excuse for why Juubi went after Shikaku, other than maybe the third was the charm? Also, that was years ago… Was Inoichi never going to let that silly little meeting go? And she _had_ thought that she and Kakashi had found and dismantled all the traps in the puppets that Sakumo sent them. Tsume tilted her head to the side. Inoichi smelled more of concern and fear than he did of resentment and bitterness. It was a much better combination of scents than what the other parents had left behind, and something she approved. “I can’t guarantee anything,” she admitted, drumming her heels against the ground. “But I do know that you’d be in much more danger with me than your daughter would with my son.”

Inoichi glared at her. Tsume had done a number of search-and-rescue missions with the InoShikaCho trio after she became a chuunin, and it was generally agreed upon throughout Konoha that it was far safer to be rescued by the team that included Tsume than it was to be on the team itself. The trio’s ability to generally come back from such missions intact and (usually) only mildly injured attested to their renowned skill and teamwork. 

“Besides,” Tsume added, knowing how by the book Inoichi was, “it’s an important step in a child’s development to interact with others, especially those who seem to be social pariahs. It will help your daughter grow in generosity and compassion.”

“I’d rather she be a proper bloodthirsty kunoichi,” Inoichi replied. Nonetheless, he dipped a hand into his pocket and withdrew a well-worn, dog-eared book with multiple brightly-colored indexer tabs sticking out of the pages like confetti, titled _Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic._ Because he was _literally_ by the book. He flipped through some of the pages and intently studied a passage that was highlighted in neon yellow and starred three times with ink. After a moment, he snapped the book shut, tucked it back into his pocket, and slouched down in the bench with a sulky expression. “As long as their interaction is _supervised_ ,” he stressed. 

Tsume tried not to look smug. They watched silently as Ino eventually grew tired of the swings, and recruited Shikamaru, Kiba, and Naruto into helping her push the merry-go-round. Tsume could already see who was the alpha in the gaggle of kids. “They’re already playing well together,” Tsume said, slyly nudging Inoichi with her elbow. “Say, if the two you brought get hungry, I’ve got more than enough snacks for everyone.” She pulled the basket onto her lap and opened it up, proudly displaying what she had packed.

Inoichi poked through the goods. “Smoked cheese and sausages – high in fat, but good source of calcium and iron for growing bodies. Raisin muffins? I bet you made these with white flour and white sugar. Don’t you know that research indicates that white flour and white sugar may be a contributing trigger for ADHD due to the changes in gut flora?” He glanced sideways to where Kiba had crawled into the middle of the spinning merry-go-round and was trying to stand while screaming at the top of his lungs. “Evidently not,” Inoichi added with disdain. “Proper nutrition in the early years is vital in establishing a life-long vibrant health.”

Tsume didn’t think that deserved the dignity of a response. “I’ve got some celery sticks in there for you crunchy granola types.” No wonder Shikamaru loved it when she snuck him butterscotch cookies.

“What’s that?”

She slammed the basket shut and set it off to the side. “Nothing.” Then she turned around in her seat and waved excitedly at the newcomers. “Hello! Come and join us!”

The young civilian mother, her cheeks rosy in the cold and her hair mostly tucked under her cap, led her shy daughter forward. The girl, approximately the same age as the other children, carefully hid behind her mother’s legs.

“Are you shinobi?” the mother asked. Then she blushed a deep red and bowed in apology. “Oh, forgive me my rudeness!”

Tsume never replaced her sister’s forehead protector – there would only ever be the one – but she had applied the alpha markings to her face that morning, showing Naruto and Kiba what the symbols and colors meant. Inoichi wore casual civilian clothes without his forehead protector.

“It’s all right,” Tsume said. “We don’t mind.” She ignored the shifty look that Inoichi gave her, one that said _You and rudeness are kindred spirits._ “I’m Inuzuka Tsume.” The woman’s scent didn’t shift with recognition or any other emotion at the introduction. “This is Yamanako Inoichi. Why don’t you join us?”

“Oh, that would be just wonderful! I am Haruno Mebuki, and this is my daughter, Sakura.” At Tsume’s eager nod, the woman turned a nervous smile onto her daughter, dropping her hand to settle on the pink hair. “Why don’t you go play with the others, Sakura-chan?” 

Sakura, her face pinned against her mother’s knees, shook her head.

Mebuki gave the others a strained smile. “She’s very shy…” Mebuki smelled of regret and embarrassment.

Tsume reached around Inoichi and knowingly nudged Kuromaru. They exchanged looks, and Kuromaru slid off the bench with a huff. He shook his coat for a moment, and then trotted over to Sakura. After considering the small child for a moment, Kuromaru licked her ear.

Sakura giggled and squirmed harder against her mother’s knees.

Pleased with this response, Kuromaru licked her again with a huff, his tail wagging. When Sakura giggled and turned to look at him, he jumped back and crouched down, tail still wagging. Tsume rummaged around in her pockets until she found the bright red rubber ball that she had stuffed in her coat yesterday, and offered it to Sakura. “Throw it for him – Kuromaru loves to play catch!”

After glancing at her mother for confirmation, Sakura accepted the ball and threw it. It landed a meter away from Kuromaru. He shot Tsume a quick look – _really? –_ and then made an elaborate show of leaping after the ball, and carrying it to back to Sakura with his head proudly held high. Sakura burst into giggles as she accepted the ball and threw it again. It landed on the other side of Kuromaru, barely missing his tail.

Kuromaru looked over his haunch at the ball, tail drooping slightly. “I think we better try the slides next, kid,” he told Sakura gruffly. She gasped in wonder at his speech, and allowed herself to be herded to where Ino was leading the boys on an assault against the slides. Naruto and Kiba swung their kunai like swords, but hadn’t poked each other’s eyes out yet. Ino squealed in delight with having another little girl join their group.

Mebuki sank down on the bench beside Tsume. Tsume pressed tightly against Inoichi, partly to make more room for Mebuki, and partly because she might need to snag Inoichi if he decided to escape when Kuromaru wasn’t pinning him on the other side. “Oh, thank goodness! She’s been going through this clinging phase, and I haven’t had a moment to myself since it started! We haven’t even left the house in over a month, even for groceries! Sakura is a very intelligent girl – she stared reading all by herself – but I want her to meet and make friends, and not sit with her nose in a book all day long.”

Inoichi nodded his head, sagely. “Already reading? Ah, it’s always a challenge to meet your gifted child’s needs. It’s easy to let them find their own way because they’re so intelligent, but so important to remember that they’re still just a little child. That’s my daughter, Ino.” He proudly pointed as Ino crested the slide and yelled that she was queen of the mountain. “She’s already speaking with perfectly structured sentences.” Kiba pushed Ino over, and she slid backwards down the slide with a shriek. “And _that_ little playground terror is hers,” he added sullenly, jabbing his thumb at Tsume.

Tsume smiled benignly and shrugged. “My children were raised in a barn by a pack of wild wolves.”

Inoichi choked with unexpected laughter, having been recruited last year with Kakashi and Pakkun to gather up said pack of wild wolves that had accidentally been released from their confinements, and then covered up his slip by coughing.

Mebuki watched wide-eyed as Naruto and Kiba scrapped over who was now the king of the mountain. Sakura was brushing slush off of Ino’s jacket and hair. Mebuki gave no hint of recognizing Naruto, either in her scent or her body language. “They certainly have a lot of energy.”

“Right.” Tsume nodded her head vigorously and hammered her heels against the ground. “That’s why we came to the playground. Gotta burn off some of that excess energy.”

Mebuki leaned back against the bench and tilted her head upward with a smile. “Wow. It’s amazing how there’s only us three parents and our children on the playground. I would’ve thought that there’d be more.”

Inoichi coughed again, his elbow pointedly nudging his companion in her ribcage. Tsume silently bared her teeth in warning at him, and then eased into a smile when Mebuki turned towards her. “It’s the weather,” Tsume said as demurely as she could. Then she viciously dug an index finger into Inoichi’s ribs, knowing exactly where his ticklish spot was. He squirmed and choked again.

“Do you two know each other?” Mebuki asked. “Well, of course you must, because you’re both ninja. A friend asked me to join the Allied Mothers Forces, but that means remedial training. I never passed my genin test, so I don’t think I’d do very well.” Her scent was colored with shame, even though her face was relaxed and her eyes shuttered – civilians often didn’t like to advertise that they had washed out of the Academy. They often considered themselves failures; shinobi considered them unknowingly wise, since it was better to bow out of a lifetime of blood and sorrow than it was to attempt it ill-prepared and unsuited. Unsuited people were dead people, after all.

“Inoichi and I have known each other since Academy.” Inoichi had been swept into enough of Tsume’s schoolyard brawls when she wanted to see her sire without her great-grandmother suspecting anything. “He’s actually a teammate to my brother, and we occasionally go on missions together.” Tsume considered Mebuki’s scent for a moment, and then added, “The Allied Mothers Forces might suit you. Most of the other women I know said it was a lot easier to go through the remedial training, because protecting Konoha is personal, now.”

Mebuki’s eyes instantly went to Sakura, who was quietly helping Shikamaru create a snowman from the slushy snow. Ino had climbed on top of Kuromaru and was digging her heels into his side, yelling, “Giddyup!” Kuromaru glared at her unmoving, so Ino kicked harder. Kiba was standing in the seat of his swing, yodeling as he swung in wide arcs. Naruto was sneaking up on Sakura and Shikimaru with a handful of snowballs he had hastily created.

“My wife,” Inoichi began, “is one of the Forces’ captains. I can talk to her about getting you into a training program. It’s not as extensive or as rigorous as the Academy’s, and focuses primarily on stealth and trap-laying.” The Allied Mothers Forces developed after the Second War finished, the women left behind deciding that they would never be left vulnerable again if the Hokage was called away. During the Third Shinobi War, they became Alpha Queen Trap Masters Extraordinaire, but had downvoted Tsume’s suggestion for changing their name to a better reflection of their skill level.

Mebuki flashed them both a grateful smile. “I would like that. I don’t really want to go on missions like you two do, but I do want to keep my daughter and Konoha safe. I want… I want Sakura to go to the Academy, and succeed.” The words, _unlike me_ , were pronounced in their silence.

Before anything more could be said, a messenger was instantly in front of Tsume. He wore the ANBU uniform, and his face was covered with a mask painted as a cardinal.

“Hi, Koyama-san,” Tsume declared brightly. Nara Koyama was the one of her favorite cousins.

The messenger slouched with a groan. “Damn it, Tsume. When the mask is on, my identity is anonymous. Why do you always do this? Now I have to file a report on this…” He rubbed the back of his head. “Man, what a drag.”

Tsume scratched her chin. “Oh yeah, sorry about that. What’s up?”

“The Hokage is commanding your immediate presence.”

Huh – that usually meant an emergency that required her tracking skills. “All right. Let me just take my boys back—”

“Yeah, no. He said _right now_.”

Extreme urgency usually indicated a B-rank or higher child abduction. Such missions were easy work and paid well, since Tsume got to follow the ShikaInoChou team (apparently not _this_ time since Inoichi was left undisturbed at her side ) or an ANBU team that did all the fighting; all she had to do was sniff out the trail, and care for the child in the interim following the rescue. She liked those missions the most, especially when she could make the child feel better, but they were also the most emotionally difficult, because the child was also usually traumatized by the time the team rescued them. “Fine.” Tsume handed the picnic basket over to Inoichi. “Food and drinks in there, and no, you’re not allowed to trash the raisin muffins. I _will_ know if they don’t get fed to my children, and I don’t care if you think that white flour is the devil.” She whistled, and Kuromaru immediately came over. Ino clung to his back like a stubborn little barnacle, his fur bunched in her fists. “The Hokage wants me post-haste,” she told Kuromaru, even though he had already heard the messenger. “I’ll leave the boys in your care.”

“Why not his?” Kuromaru asked, indicating Inoichi. Inoichi looked like he swallowed a lemon.

“I can help,” Mebuki said. “If… If your ninken here wouldn’t mind showing me where you lived when the children are done playing, I’ll be glad to take your sons home for you.”

Tsume liked Mebuki’s scent. It was both light and strong, like apple blossoms and ozone. “I’ve got two other children in the Academy over there. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but if I’m not back, Hana and Kabuto can take them home after classes. I imagine the boys are going to want to play pretty much the entire day, and that’s okay.”

As she followed after Koyama, she heard Inoichi tell Mebuki with admiration in his voice, “You are a brave, brave woman.”

Tsume didn’t think that Mebuki would do anything to Naruto – nothing in her scent hinted otherwise – and she trusted Inoichi enough to keep Naruto safe despite his fear of the Kyuubi. Besides, the Hokage’s office oversaw the playground. She’d be out of the window and down the side of the building the moment she smelled trouble, although it was unlikely that Kuromaru would leave her much to do except pry his teeth out of someone’s throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inoichi's book truly exists! I have never read it, but it was a fun title for a father who may or may not be confused with Ino's incredibly powerful personality.


	29. Delta Years - Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that Juubi gets his very own Bingo Book entry? He totally deserves it.
> 
> Also, I have some questions on the whole Hyuuga Affair. Soooooo, Konoha sends off the body of Hyuuga Hizashi, assuming that hey, they're identical twins, there's absolutely NO WAY that Kumo would know the difference! So Kumo thinks that they get the body of Hyuuga Hiashi, but Hiashi - especially as clan head - isn't the sort to assume the identity of his brother, especially the role as a branch family member. So Kumo would've eventually realized that they were had. Was there some sort of political fall out when that happened, or did Kumo just keep their mouth shut because they did lie about any involvement in the attempted abduction of a three year old clan heir with a powerful Bloodline Limit?

Hyuuga Hiashi was seated in front of the Hokage when Tsume entered the office.

“Close the door,” the Hokage told Tsume without looking up from his papers. Hiashi twitched in his seat as Tsume did so, and then stood to attention next to Hiashi. The Hokage knit his fingers together in a bridge and leaned back in his chair. The combined sour stench of Hiachi’s grief, regret, and rage filled the room, like the distinct odor of sulfur before the strike of a match. It was strong enough to almost drown out the Kyuubi’s scent.

“You know,” the Hokage began without preamble, “of the Hyuuga Incident.”

Tsume vaguely recalled some of the details – she could remember more if she concentrated hard enough. An envoy carrying a peace-treaty from Kumo had been killed when he tried kidnapping Hiashi’s daughter, Hinata, three months ago. The last that Tsume had heard was Konoha and Kumo were still in tense talks in order to prevent a war, since the envoy was some kind of high muckity-muck. She still wasn’t sure why being a high muckity-muck exempted him from any ramifications of trying to kidnap a three year old. “I know.”

“We cannot afford to go to war.” That Tsume knew to be true. Konoha was still trying to recover from the Kyuubi’s attack, coming so close at the heels of the end of the Third Shinobi World War. Structures had been repaired and replaced, but their forces were still on the sparse side. Tsume’s clan was doing its best to replenish the ranks with multiple offspring, which Tsume thought was a lot more than what the Hyuuga clan was doing, since they required the branch families to limit how many children they had. “To preserve peace and to keep the treaty in place, Kumo demanded a life for a life.”

Tsume glanced sideways. Hiashi was curling forward, hunching into himself. His hands curled into white-knuckled fists as the rage spiked. “I take it we’re giving them the life?”

“They demanded Hyuuga Hiashi, as he’s responsible for killing Hinata’s would-be abductor.” Oh, that couldn’t be good, handing over the Clan Head of the one of Konoha’s four noble clans. Even Tsume could see what a political fiasco such would be. “A volunteer stepped forward to take his place – Hiashi’s twin brother.” The Hokage hesitated briefly, gaze flashing towards Hiashi. “His body is currently in preservation.”

Hiashi remained silent as he pressed a fist against his forehead. He took deep, calming breaths, but Tsume didn’t need her nose to know that it wasn’t working. Tsume always figured that she’d probably die for Konoha, but couldn’t imagine also being handed over to the enemy to preserve peace. It struck her as ruthless and demeaning. Then again, she did know what it was like being handed over to the enemy _alive_ , in order to win a war and gain peace.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Tsume told Hiashi, because the odor of his genuine grief meant that it had been voluntary, and not forced. With a sudden flash of insight, Tsume realized how well she understood Hyuuga Hizashi’s decision to die for Konoha. If it meant that her children would live, she would gladly return to Madame Haori’s Palace of Pleasure.

The Hokage continued. “The curse seal will prevent Kumo from obtaining any secrets from the body, although I will be taking further precautionary steps. I made it very clear to Kumo that we must still show our dead due honor, and so we will only deliver the body directly to the Raikage at Hizashi’s final resting place – the heart of Kumogakure.”

“Where do I come into this?” Tsume ignored Hiashi’s hissed breath.

The Hokage dropped his hands and leaned forward. His eyes were sharp beneath the brim of his hat. “The Raikage agreed to this on one condition: only _one_ Konoha nin may delivery the body, and that Konoha nin must be B rank or lower in the Bingo Book, and _cannot_ have a bloodline limit. The Konoha nin would be accompanied at all times by a heavy guard. Questions will not be tolerated, and any attempt to sneak away to obtain Intel of any sorts on Kumo would end in death _and_ a formal declaration of war.”

Hiashi banged his fists against his chair arms. “And you want to send this _simpleton_ on such a delicate mission? She’d probably forget her mission parameters, and then my brother’s death will be wasted when Kumo declares war against us! It was _her_ sensei that caused the last war, and all because _she_ wandered off in the first place!”

Tsume twitched defensively. “Hey! Sakumo had a lot of help from other countries when it came to starting a war!” Wandered off like she was lost in market, or chasing down a runaway four year old Kakashi who got himself kidnapped for Kiri’s Academy – Hiashi probably would think the difference was just nit-picking.

“What is the point of this sacrifice of dignity and life when we gain nothing? The price of saving my daughter’s life is my own twin brother’s death. _And for what?_ ” Hiashi’s expression was livid as his chin trembled and his eyes watered.

The Hokage was silent for a moment as Hiashi struggled to reign in his temper. “Tsume will not forget her mission parameters, as she will be doing exactly as the Raikage commands, and will faithfully follow all restrictions. It won’t matter though – olfaction is an underestimated sense of which Tsume has no limit. We will have a great advantage to have Tsume so close.”

Hiashi’s laugh was bitter; his gaze was as haughty as it was dismissive when it flickered over to Tsume. “The Inuzuka nose cannot compare to the vision of the Byakugen. Kumo would’ve elsewise tried kidnapping Inuzuka Tsume instead of my daughter. I remain unconvinced that your decision is in the best interests of Konoha, and you continue to insult me by demanding that I trust your _questionable wisdom_.”

The Hokage gave Hiashi a flat look. Then he sighed. “What you’re about to hear is _as great an importance_ to the security and wellbeing of Konoha as our jinchuuriki. The precise level and knowledge is known only by _four_ other persons within the walls of Konoha. I tell you this _only_ so you appreciate that I am _not_ insulting your brother’s sacrifice. I would not offer this to anyone else, Hiashi – I would demand that others trust my judgment. Once assured, you will do your utmost to ever forget what you have learned, and will _never_ breathe so much the slightest hint to anyone that such exists. This must never be learned by anyone – not our enemies, nor our allies. This is a SS-class secret, I mean it.” The Hokage waited until Hiashi vowed silence, and then turned to Tsume. “Find Tsunade. And make a show of it for our audience.”

At least he hadn’t asked for Jiraiya. Trying to track someone cloaked in nature chakra from over a hundred kilometers away was a daunting task that Tsume no longer accepted, especially after the last time – although successful – caused a week-long throbbing, miserable headache and bloody urine. From a great distance away, Jiraiya always required going very far past her allowed limits, and she always lost a little more each time she exceeded herself.

Tsume walked around the Hokage’s desk to his window, and tugged it open. A small veil of shapeless clouds had covered the sun, and Konoha looked drab and dark in the daylight, the buildings stark against the remaining snow. Tsume leaned against the window and took a deep breath of the cold air. She sifted through the local scents, dismissed them with a long-practiced ease, and ignored all the scents that she deemed unnecessary. Once she cleared her mind of local distractions, Tsume increased the chakra at her nose. With the annoying Kyuubi scent clogging everything, she upped her chakra levels to get past it. Behind her, she heard the Hokage rustling through his papers.

It was like soaring. Tsume imagined herself flying along the winds with the scents, over forests and fields, rivers and mountains. There was the swamp where Kakashi had been injured – there were the flat plains of Grass – there was the dusty desert where the cracked ground met mounds of sand – there was the scent of a man, little more than a boy, really, who should be dead… Tsume carefully pushed past her maximum allowed olfaction to reach beyond the Kyuubi, and searched for the scent of incense and long-burdened guilt, of someone who hadn’t been in the Land of Fire in the last five years.

“She’s in the Land of Hot Water,” Tsume said once she found what she was looking for.

She heard the Hokage thump the desk. “There,” he murmured to Hiashi.

“Hung-over,” she added, cataloguing the surrounding scents.

“ _I_ could’ve told you that,” Hiashi snapped.

“Eh, true, but she’s hung-over on amarone. Sake is usually Tsunade’s drink of choice, but the gambling parlors in Kyougi are renowned for serving wine, of which she had plenty with nothing to eat for dinner the night before, although she did have fried eel for lunch yesterday. She’s asleep in a bed with periwinkle cotton sheets, and she wears a nightgown of purple silk from the Land of Rivers – it was dyed using periwinkle and beets, and the Land of Rivers is the only place that uses that combination, but I can’t quite tell where the sheets came from. They’re generic. She actually bought the nightgown when she passed through Rivers about… oh, last summer. Late last summer. She must have done well in the parlor because her change purse smells metallic and the fibers are stretched – the weaker fibers have broken, so her purse is full. But Tsunade is unhappy, and her sleep is restless. She bathed two days ago and used a milk-soap with lavender and almond oils.”

Tsume abruptly dropped her chakra as she felt an agonizing burn settle at the top of her head, but continued with what her short term memory held on to. “Shizune is down in the dining room, and is bringing up a tray of raspberry cakes with vanilla frosting, and weak green tea. There are another hundred people staying in the hotel attached to the gambling parlor, only twelve of them who are women, but that doesn’t include the cleaning servants – vinegar is the main cleaning agent, by the way, although whoever cleans the third floor is sloppier than the people cleaning the first or second floors. Tsunade also made some enemies with all her winnings last night, because there is a heavy layer of anger and resentment surrounding the gambling table she was seated at. Four men, between the ages of forty and sixty. One is still asleep, the other three are awake, and those three have gathered together for a discussion – they’re still angry and resentful. Two of them are armed with swords that have been recently oiled and sharpened.”

After a quick overt sniff towards her sons (the cloying scent of the Kyuubi masked Kiba’s, so she had to spike her sensitivity for just a heartbeat), Tsume closed the window to keep the cold from coming inside the office, and turned back to the Hokage. Turning away from the light reflecting off slushy snow eased some of the jabbing pain behind her eyes.

Hiashi’s face was white as he stared at the map that the Hokage had spread across his desk. “Land of Hot Water,” the Hokage murmured, his eyes also on the map. “That’s approximately _six hundred_ kilometers from my office, and Tsume-san was able to tell you exactly what sort of food is about to be served with what sort of tea to Tsunade, as well as her current condition. And I suppose we can also infer that three men are going to shortly try ambushing Tsunade to get their money back from her, based on the description of how they sharpened their weapons. From six hundred kilometers away.” The Hokage was silent for a moment as he pointedly met Hiruzen’s shocked gaze. “Tsume will be in the heart of Kumogakure, without any barriers that the snow and the distance could create.” He tapped the far right corner of the map. “Tsume’s nose is not a bloodline limit, nor is her talent detectable. She can detect information that even the most carefully couched question from our T&I wouldn’t discover. We will get the Intel, honor your brother’s sacrifice, obey the Raikage’s directions to the very letter, gather extraordinary information on their forces and great deal of blackmail material at the same time.” The Hokage folded his hands and regarded his visitor with a gentle expression. “Hyuuga Hizashi bought us peace with his sacrifice, and we will honor him for that.”

Tsume tried not to show that the throbbing pain in her temples existed.

“Tsume will meet with you at your family compound tonight to obtain the transportation scroll that your brother is sealed in.” The Hokage stood, and then deliberately bowed his head in respect. “Konohagakure thanks you and your brother for your sacrifices.”

Hiashi’s expression looked crushed for a brief moment. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, carefully relaxed his face, and bowed respectfully to the Hokage. Upon straightening, he looked directly at Tsume. “See that you do not fail,” he snapped, before leaving abruptly.

As soon as the Hokage’s office door clicked shut, Tsume crouched down and brushed her hair away from where it hid her ears. She pressed the hem of her long sleeves against the blood trickling from her ears as the Hokage sat down in his chair. “That ordinarily wouldn’t have pushed you past your limits.”

Tsume shrugged. “I’ve been pushing my threshold in the last few days because of Naruto.” She cradled her head in her hands and applied a steady pressure to her temple. “I don’t know why, but ever since I found Naruto, the smell of the Kyuubi is really strong, like always being downwind of an onion farm.” 

“Has anyone else noticed?”

“Oyubi said no, but Hana said Naruto smelled like a fox.”

“And this hadn’t been a problem before Naruto came to your compound.”

Tsume carefully shrugged. “I’ve always smelled the Kyuubi, never him. But the Kyuubi’s odor is so much stronger now, and it smothers everything.” Through the throbbing rush of blood in her ears, she heard the rustle of the Hokage’s garments and the clink of stoneware as he poured a cup of tea. Then he slipped from his chair and sat on the floor beside her. He slid a steaming cup of tea over to her, and sipped his own. “Do you think it’s his seal?” Tsume asked.

“It’s certainly concerns me, but there’s no one in Konoha who will touch the Fourth’s handiwork.” Danzo _could_ , but the Hokage had just inferred that he wasn’t going to allow such.

The solution was simple and obvious to Tsume. If no one in Konoha would – or could – touch the seal, then someone outside of Konoha would have to. “I’ll just get Jiraiya to do it.”

The Hokage smelled amused. “And just how do you propose to do this when the Festival of Hot Springs was canceled this coming year because of the last time he was in town? He’s not even in the country.”

“I know that. I’ll just bring Naruto along with me, and we’ll make a detour on our way to Kumogakure.”

The amusement instantly soured. “You propose to take our current jinchuuriki to the very same village that tried to kidnap our last jinchuuriki?”

Wait… what? When did this happen? Tsume gave the Hokage an incredulous look from beneath her elbow. “Did I miss something?”

The Hokage studied her for a moment, and the pressure of his killing intent eased back. Not that it would’ve motivated Tsume into good behavior with as bad as her head currently felt. “She never told you. I would’ve thought you knew…”

“Who told me what?”

He shook his head and dropped his gaze back to his tea. “It’s in the past now – it doesn’t matter.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then it shouldn’t be such a big deal to tell me.”

He took a slow sip, and then rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. Tsume dropped her hands as the vise-like pressure eased away from her head. A stabbing pain still lingered behind her eyes, but the throbbing rush in her ears had quieted down – that meant her blood pressure was dropping; good, maybe she’d get to keep normal kidney function this time around.

“Did you ever wonder why it was so important that we rescued Uzumaki Kushina when she was captured in the Second War?”

Tsume _had_ wondered at the time, but figured that it didn’t matter in the long run – Kushina was a precious person, no matter her importance. She later learned that Kushina was the great-great-niece to the First Hokage’s wife, Uzumaki Mito, and figured _that_ was why Kushina was so important.

She then thought of Naruto and Minato, and Tsume’s blood ran cold with realization. “Kushina was the jinchuuriki before Naruto.” She had never even _suspected_ … It also made a lot more sense as to why Kushina’s son was chosen to be the jinchuuriki. Huh. And for three years she had thought it was because Mooncalf snagged the first orphaned baby he could find in a pinch.

“Yes. She inherited the Kyuubi directly from Uzumaki Mito herself. You saw the level of mass destruction the Kyuubi is capable of, and you know why it mustn’t fall into the hands of our enemies.”

Tsume remembered the kind of person Kushina had been, and thought of that gut-wrenching malice that had swamped the entire village three and a half years ago. Kushina had always been so good, so caring, always looking out for Tsume and Kokoro. Even when carrying such malice within, Kushina remained as genuine and as loving as the day that Tsume had met her at Konoha’s far entrance.

Even though her personal doubt plagued her heart, Tsume knew that Kushina would understand why Tsume had ignored her son for so long, and she would be so happy that Tsume finally came around.

Tsume smiled as a rush of giddiness filled her. She leaned forward and captured her ankles with her hands. “That’s okay,” she whispered. “Thanks for letting me know.” She felt the smile stretch until it nearly took up her face, and guilt burned away from the vestiges of her spirit. It was going to be all right now with Naruto. No matter what anyone would ever say about the danger of the jinchuuriki, Tsume knew the truth now.

The Kyuubi could never corrupt that sunshine-smile any more than it could corrupt Kushina’s flame.

“This mission could still mean your death, which is why you cannot take Naruto with you.” The Hokage pushed Tsume’s forgotten teacup a little closer to her. Tsume dabbed her fingers in the tea and used the moisture to wipe away the last smearing trails of blood from her ears. “I cannot guarantee that the Raikage simply won’t have you killed, and then claim you broke the agreement. He’s already denied that Kumo would kidnap Hyuuga toddlers, so I fully expect him to lie about other things. We could still wind up going to war, after all.”

Tsume dipped her fingers in the tea, and then raised them to her lips. “I guess that means I shouldn’t use my seal on this trip.”

The Hokage nearly choked on his tea. “Absolutely not. Seducing the Raikage would cause an international disaster, even if you _did_ avoid a war.” He muttered something about how Danzo would have better success seducing the Raikage.

“So I have to be as unthreatening as possible.” Tsume rocked sideways in thought for a moment as her mind did loop-de-loops. It was really hard to think when her head was pounding. “Then we have to make it obvious to everyone all around that I wouldn’t dare step a foot out of line. I know how I can do this, but it would still require bringing Naruto along. And Kiba. If I made it a family holiday…”

The Hokage shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And if they managed to kill you, the Kyuubi and your son would still be in the hands of our enemy. Do you want that for your children?”

“Not if I linked them with the seals that Minato worked out in the Second War.” Tsume set her tea down, accidentally sloshing some of the liquid onto the Hokage’s hard floor, and turned to him as excitement bubbled in her chest. “See, Mooncalf told me all about his Flying Thunder God seal. With some input from Aunt Natsumi, I bet that Jiraiya could jury-rig a seal on the boys that they could be reverse-summoned _to you_ if something were to happen. Besides, I didn’t say that they would be coming to _Kumo_ with me.”

Tsume leaned forward and touched the Hokage’s arm before he could make a protest. “Look, the Raikage is only going to allow one Konoha nin _into_ Kumo, but nowhere does it say that only one Konoha nin will be _traveling_ to Kumo. Send the Ino-Shi-Chou team with me, and make it known to the Raikage that they will await my return at a certain time, and my brother can hold my sons. The Raikage will know, given a small enough window of time and whom I brought along, I’m not going to break the agreement – there’s too much as stake for me, personally, almost like Konoha is holding hostages against me. He won’t be able to fabricate a decent excuse about me breaking the agreement, so he wouldn’t be able to get away with killing me and lying about how I stepped out of line.”

The Hokage considered Tsume for a long moment, and then drained his teacup. “It will be risky.”

Tsume knew that it would be just as risky to leave Naruto alone at Konoha. Grandmother Shinzou had taught Tsume that wounds of the heart were often more harmful and took so much longer to heal than wounds of the body, and she wouldn’t leave Naruto alone with so many people still hating and fearing him. She saw how much Naruto needed her, and she wasn’t going to leave him so soon after promising that she would keep him safe.

As much as she hated to admit it, she didn’t feel comfortable with leaving Naruto under Danzo’s care for a significant length of time. At least not when Naruto was so young and impressionable. Danzo may not deliberately try to destroy the boy’s spirit, but he was too emotionally clumsy to help it heal. Tsume’s brain injury and child abuse put her in a unique place where Danzo’s treatment had actually been therapeutic, but she didn’t think it would work for Naruto.

“It could work, _and_ I can get Jiraiya to look at Naruto’s seal. It’s a great way to kill two birds with one stone. And if the Raikage does kill me, I’ll go down fighting and I promise to leave so much damage behind that it’ll take _them_ an entire generation to recover!” Tsume flashed a V at the Hokage.

The Hokage studied Tsume for a moment, and then nodded. “You do have the army for wiping out Kumo, even if it would kill you in the end. If you’re going to die either way, that may be the only answer we have. But you will go with a team of my choosing.”

“Okay.”

oOoOoOo

“Does anyone want to hear about First Mother and Juubi?” Inuzuka Tsume asked the children. “Naruto, Kiba, and I’ve got to leave first thing in the morning, so I figured that this would be the perfect bedtime story for everyone.”

Kiba raised his hand excitedly and waved it in the air. “Me! Me!”

Hana sulked. “Still can’t see why I couldn’t come.”

“You have to attend the Academy,” Tsume told her. “Besides, you’ll be too busy bonding with Danzo’s kids to notice that your youngest brothers and I will be gone.”

Sai cocked his head to the side. “What’s a Juubi?” he asked.

“It’s this really awesome demon with ten tails,” Tsume explained as she hugged her pillow to herself. She grinned and tweaked Sai’s nose. “I have a Juubi too, except he’s just a horse.” She ignored Danzo’s mutter of _worthless cow, actually_ , and proceeded to burrow under the scattered covers and talk at the same time. “I wish I could’ve seen the real Juubi. Anyway, the Juubi is _way_ cooler than the Kyuubi – and way, way stronger than the Kyuubi.”

Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose. Only Inuzuka Tsume would think the legendary monster that terrorized the Elemental Countries until it was finally subdued by the Sage of Six Paths was _cool_. If it hadn’t been for the prolapsed uterus, the subsequent hysterectomy, the secondary and the _second_ secondary infections after the self-administered cesarean with Kiba, Tsume probably would’ve been frolicking with the Kyuubi when it attacked, giggling the entire time.

And why couldn’t he shake the feeling that if she had lived in the time of the Sage, Tsume would’ve trailed after the Juubi and plotted on how to best take it home with her?

_Because she would_ , he decided sullenly. And he was most certainly sullen with the idea of Tsume adopting a gigantic ten-tailed demon, and _not_ because she popped up in his house with all of her other children on tow for a surprise sleepover, so the other two foster-siblings that he and Tsume shared could feel included in the family.

It was only a small consolation that Kakashi and Yamato looked as uncomfortable and awkward in their pajamas as he felt in his – especially after Hana had turned to Tsume and asked her why Danzo was wearing Tsume’s old bathrobe. “You _will_ clean up the blanket forts in the morning,” he said, just be absolutely clear that he was heard. The children cringed at the tone of his voice and the look on his face. Yamato and Kakashi hardly looked all that intimidated. He might have to do some impromptu training with them tomorrow. He’d go lightly with Kakashi, given that the boy was still healing from having his ribcage flayed open.

Tsume poked her head out from beneath the blanket she was burrowed under. “Sure. I’ll even make sure that the dishes are washed. Do you wanna tell a story after I’m done?”

“No.” Danzo stalked out of his living room, and wondered if he had any blankets left on his sleeping mat after Hana and Kabuto absconded with everything in his linen closet _and_ emptied his mother’s cedar chest. After assuring himself that, yes, his mother’s cedar chest was indeed empty but his mat remained undisturbed, Danzo contemplated the pros and cons of locking his bedroom door.

After realizing that Tsume would probably crawl through his window to say goodbye, he left the door unlocked.

oOoOoOo

The Raikage surveyed his stack of paperwork and considered, once more, the repercussions of becoming the Raikage. He was a warrior, not a paper-pusher, damn it! As he sullenly tugged another pile towards him and readied his pen like an assassin readying his kunai, his door swung open. The backdraft created by the opening door swept his papers off the desk onto the gray stone floor.

A twitched and growled as the pen snapped in half.

The messenger held his missive in front of himself, as if he expected the flimsy scroll to derail his Raikage’s wrath. “SpecialdeliveryfromtheHokage.”

“Ah. Probably the reply to my demands. Let’s see what that sly old fox is going to pull this time.” Despite the loss of his head jounin (who was an asshole anyway, so no great loss there, really), A was enjoying the mind games taking place via messenger bird. Subterfuge with carefully crafted words across a long distance with an admirable opponent wasn’t quite as satisfying as meeting the man on the battlefield, but it still provided him with more intellectual stimulation than the badly-misspelled reports from genin or – worse yet – his brother’s reports. Killer B had recently begun speaking and writing everything he could in haiku, and Killer B was no more a decent poet than A was a virginal Snow Maiden.

Plus, this fiasco could net him another set of Byakugen eyes. He was okay with playing metaphorical chess via letters.

A snatched the back of the messenger’s shirt. “Where do you think you’re going? You have a mess to clean up. Make sure that everything is stacked in chronological and alphabetical order.” He glared unblinking until the man was bent over, cleaning up the spilled papers, before turning his attention on the missive.

The missive was brief, since the Hokage relented to A’s demands. He squashed the disappointment, since he had been hoping to continue his long-distance arguing. It read that a team of Konoha nin was already on route to Kumo, and would meet with his team in a designated village inside the border of Lightning in ten days ( _eight days from now_ , he calculated, given how long it took the missive to arrive after the Hokage wrote it). The single chosen nin would accompany the Raikage’s team to Kumo to make the final delivery, and the Konoha nin’s team would await for her return at the village.

The chosen nin was one Inuzuka Tsume.

A read the missive twice, searching for any hidden meaning or duplicity. It was wise of the Hokage to agree to A’s plans, and then immediately enact upon the delivery – doing so made it harder for A to make even more restrictive demands, since the Hokage could deflect such with a team already in transition. “Hey, get me the Bingo Book.” The messenger carefully bypassed his neat little stacks to the bookshelf that held different references and manuals. After obtaining the demanded book, the messenger returned to sorting the papers.

Upon verifying that the Bingo Book was the current edition, A flipped through the book until he found Inuzuka Tsume’s entry, and studied it carefully.

Inuzuka Tsume was a C rank Special Jounin, with a well-documented brain injury that left her with a poor memory for strategy and inability to memorize high-ranking jutsu. She specialized in seduction– A felt his regard of this unknown kunoichi sink into the depths of disdain, since he considered seduction to be a cheap shortcut for kunoichi to advance their careers without actually developing their battle skills – and tracking missions. Tsume was an exceptional tracker even among a clan made up entirely of exception trackers, but had to be placed with high-ranking teams on search-and-rescue missions due to her reckless aggressiveness.

The Inuzuka clan was famous for its undying loyalty to clan and village. It was also infamous for being rough, rowdy, uncouth, and animalistic. Even the tamest of dogs lash out if threatened, and the Inuzuka clan was considered barely housebroken, much less tame. Given A’s experience with Inuzuka women in the Second and Third Shinobi World Wars, he was fairly sure that reckless aggressiveness was standard, regardless of any brain injury.

“What are you up to, Sarutobi Hiruzen?” A growled as he leaned back. His lopsided wooden chair groaned in protest. He really needed to get that missing wheel replaced; the Kumo Bingo book twenty years out of date wasn’t holding up like it used to.

On paper, Inuzuka Tsume was a bad choice to send into a delicate situation that was balanced on the edge of a charged blast tag. He couldn’t imagine the Hokage sending a rude, aggressive woman whose clan was notorious for their animalistic tendencies when the risk of war was too great.

A considered the four-year old picture – it was a full-body shot of a pregnant young woman with wild brown hair staring wide-eyed over her shoulder, her small, dark eyes ringed with red and cheeks painted with red triangles. Her left hand was raised, grasping the bridle of a massive war horse as it lipped at her wild hair. The exposed skin of her left arm was laced with multiple scares that appeared to run from wrist to elbow. A looked more closely over her entry. Kiri was the only Hidden Village that had a bounty on Tsume, and only if she was brought to them alive. That meant she wasn’t remarkable or threatening enough to make any noteworthy enemies… or there _weren’t_ any enemies who survived crossing her path. Then again, few had survived crossing the paths of the legendary Hell Hounds duo, and yet their deadly reputation was still well-known.

Most ninjas had to be A rank or above to make the Bingo Book, with a few exceptions, including rare bloodlines, key roles in certain historical events, high bounties, or close ties to legendary ninjas. Inuzuka Tsume was current Head of the Inuzuka clan, second only to the Aburame clan for its renowned tracking skills, but still more popular (dogs were much less creepy than bugs). That was exception #1. Inuzuka Tsume was former genin apprentice to S rank Hatake Sakumo and foster-mother to S rank Hatake Kakashi. That was exception #2. Inuzuka Tsume was also the chosen heir to Inuzuka Natsumi, Hell Hound and Queen of Summons. That was exception #3.

A carefully leaned back in his chair and glared at the missive that the Hokage had sent. Inuzuka’s total stats of 26 weren’t the most impressive, although average enough for a special jounin, but he had to assume that the information on her abilities (or lack thereof) was unreliable. A Konoha kunoichi with a brain injury didn’t usually become a Special Jounin _just_ because she was Clan Head or a good seductress. At least not one that looked, quite frankly, more scary than beautiful – he didn’t know much about desiring women, but knew enough to recognize that Tsume was no traditional beautiful seductress.

Inuzuka Tsume had too many ties with too many strong people not to have some hidden ace up her sleeve that she would’ve been learned from Sakumo or Natsumi. A snapped his fingers at the messenger, who was humming off-key as he worked to gather the loose papers. “You, shut up, and get me another Bingo Book – I need an edition at least fifteen years old.”

On the other hand, the Hokage surely knew that whomever he sent may not come back alive, so he wouldn’t risk losing someone important. But neither would the God of Shinobi risk another war by sending an impetuous person, especially when said person’s Jounin sensei did take part in kicking off the Third Shinobi War.

A accepted the Bingo Book. As the messenger moved the stacks of paper onto his desk, A thumbed through the Bingo Book for someone he hadn’t thought of in years. After finding the entry, he laid the Bingo Books side by side. Like her great-granddaughter, Inuzuka Shinzou was looking over her shoulder. Instead of Tsume’s wide-eyed look of surprise, Shinzou’s eyes were narrowed and her jaw tight, like a hungry predator sizing up a weak opponent. Her gray hair was every bit as wild as her great-granddaughter’s. Beneath the picture, the words faded from age, A had written, _Died from wounds incurred in the attempted capture of the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki. Age 92._ The age had been circled three times. A remembered marveling at how any ninja could live and fight for nearly a century. Not even the legendary Sage of Six Paths was said to have lived that long.

He looked at Tsume’s picture. Despite being three generations removed and eighty years younger, Tsume looked enough like Shinzou to pass as a possible reincarnation. Her eyes were different, and her chin was rounder, but the fall of hair and hairline were identical. He had to assume that Tsume had inherited more than just her looks from the deceased Hell Hound. The Inuzuka Clan Head would have to be carefully reckoned with.

Konoha did her best to hide it, but she was still vulnerable after the Kyuubi’s destruction, which was why A knew that everything would work out in Kumo’s favor even when his idiot head jounin (honestly, what had A been _thinking_ when he decided to keep that moron instead of assigning position of head jounin to a more competent person?) decided to go and abduct a three year old clan heiress without orders otherwise and then _botched_ the damn kidnapping.

Hmmm. “Get me all the current Intel we have Inuzuka Tsume.” All this thinking was making him hungry. “And a protein shake.”

The messenger brought the protein shake first, which indicated how well the man probably knew the Raikage. And it was strawberry-flavored – his favorite. Well, someone was kissing ass, but it didn’t stop A from giving the messenger the proverbial boot from his office once he opened Inuzuka’s dossier.

The dossier noted that Inuzuka Tsume was currently the best tracker of her clan, and had a very typical Inuzuka nature with all of its reckless, brash personality, over-the-top loyalty to clan and village, and complete disinterest in political maneuvering. Apparently, Tsume’s predecessor, Shinzou, had been one of the few Inuzuka to have any political ambitions, but that was partly to undermine Uchiha Madara, and partly to prevent outsiders from trying to assert control over the clan. Fortunately, Kumo’s spy system had managed to discover more specific Intel on this brain injury. Inuzuka Tsume was literally fearless, impulsive, and forgetful — not at all suitable for delicate peace envoys. She also had some sort of “bizarre animal magnetism” that drew men to her, which explained how someone clearly deficient in the good looks department could be so successful with seduction.

_How did she become a special jounin again?_ The Raikage drained the last of his protein drink and crumpled the empty carton in his fist. A couldn’t imagine how anyone with those kind of shortcomings could advance so far in their ninja career, unless there was some sort of special ability that would keep her alive.

Yet there she was, clan head since she was twelve years old, still alive with an active and successful career as a ninja.

A quickly reviewed Inuzuka’s list of allies. Ah, her biological father was Nara Shikake – she had likely inherited _some_ of that genius, which would explain how she managed to thrive as a kunoichi despite such a brain injury. He ignored the extensive details on her personal ongoing antagonism with the Uchiha clan and her reputation as a simpleton. Every village tried to make well-constructed smokescreens around their most talented ninjas. Also, Uchiha were arrogant asses in general, which just encouraged antagonism with everyone. She had a demi-summon of a horse whose terrifying reputation was enough to make most people scatter.

On a whim, A checked his current Bingo Book, and found an entry for _Juubi no Konoha_ , S rank horse. Seriously? How had he never noticed this page before?! Also, it was the same horse in Inuzuka Tsume’s Bingo entry. Maybe her bizarre animal magnetism worked on horses and men? Inuzuka also appeared to have an ongoing relationship with Shimura Danzo.

A studied _that_ more closely. His spies hadn’t figured out if Inuzuka was Shimura’s lover (A gave this _very careful_ consideration, because Tsume was young enough to be the man’s _daughter_. He never would’ve pegged the old War Hawk, whose dossier was much, much thicker than Inuzuka’s, to be a cradle robber. Unless her animal magnetism was just _that_ good), apprentice (once more reinforcing A’s suspicions that there was something far more dangerous about this woman than what met the eye), or just someone who shared a mutual hobby of gardening. Weird. Then again, A wasn’t one to judge when he liked to relax in the evenings by cross stitching kittens. 

A found nothing more of importance as he looked through Inuzuka’s dossier a second time. He snapped it shut with an irritated flick of his wrist. Well, Inuzuka Tsume evidently wasn’t much to write home about, so the situation could still play in his favor. With no reputation or experience in politics, Sarutobi Hiruzen might’ve chosen Inuzuka Tsume because she would be too blunt to be suave and manipulative.

Unless…

A groaned and covered his head with his hands. Unless the team that was accompanying Inuzuka Tsume included Inuzuka Natsumi, who would take any harm against her niece and clan head personally. He _still_ had nightmares of surviving Natsumi when he and his team were unexpectedly ambushed by literal hell hounds when they were just minding their own business, setting up a camp in Grass just a stone’s throw away from Fire. He and Killer B had barely managed to escape alive, and both had agreed that there was no shame in running away from a mostly-undressed eighty-five year old kunoichi like the hounds of hell had been chasing them. Mainly because the hounds of hell _had_ been chasing them, and apparently even the eight-tailed ox demon felt such creatures were best avoided.

And then another horrifying thought occurred to him. If Inuzuka Tsume was anything like her aunt – _heir to Inuzuka Natsumi_ – then it was best to get her out of Kumogakure as soon as possible. _No witnesses means no Intel_ , he reminded himself. A’s mind began to work furiously, putting pieces of the puzzle together. He didn’t like the image that emerged.

Clever Sarutobi Hiruzen; very clever indeed. The Hokage knew that the Raikage would require that the Konoha nin follow the exact parameters that A had outlined in his demands, and any deviation would be just cause for retaliation, like death. Someone like Tsume, if her memory and impulsiveness were as bad as rumors and Intel indicated, couldn’t help _but_ deviate from the parameters, so Kumo would naturally follow through with trying to dispose of her.

Killer B had grown in strength and skills in the last fifteen years, so A doubted that Inuzuka Tsume could defeat him – especially if she wasn’t a full-ranked jounin. But if the two of them got into a fight within Kumo’s walls – if Tsume’s strength was close enough to rival either of the Hell Hounds – then Killer B would have to release the Eight Tailed Ox, and _that_ would cause widespread devastation and a high number of bystanding casualties.

_Heir to Inuzuka Natsumi, Queen of Summons._ A shuddered to think of what happen if she managed to summon a pack of hounds of hell in the heart of Kumo itself.

If Konoha couldn’t afford to go to war because of _their_ devastation, then Kumo couldn’t either if the same level of devastation took place. It was basically a suicide mission, which someone like an Inuzuka _would_ volunteer for, because of that damnable loyalty.

A growled as he glared Tsume’s picture. He would just have to allow her to deviate from the original parameters that he had given to the Hokage, to allow her to mess up as much as could be expected with such a brain injury. Damn it – that old Fire goat was forcing A to be _reasonable_.

Well, the best way to fight fire was with even more fire. He called one of his guards forward, and ordered the man to go get Killer B. Killer B would be pleased with the opportunity to leave the village after A had kept him restricted to its parameters the last five years as a guardian, even if it was just to meet up with the Konoha nin at the designated meet-up, and accompany this kunoichi to, around, and from Kumo at all times. Killer B would be given directions to tolerate Inuzuka Tsume and her errors, and minimize whatever damage the woman caused.

After all, the Inuzuka was animal enough to surely recognize her place in the food chain when it came to tailed demons. In the time it would take to guide Tsume to Kumo, especially if he made Killer B take the long route, Killer B was fully capable of putting the fear of the Hachibi into Tsume’s simple little brain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love A in this story, and it was so fun writing his train of thought as he starts with Point A (Who is this Inuzuka Tsume and should I be worried?), and ends with the entirely wrong conclusion at Point X ((holy crap - I bet she's insanely strong, but no puny mortal being wouldn't be terrified of the Eight Tailed Ox Demon, so I shall scare the ever-loving daylights out of her with Killer B!) It's fun to highlight that perspective against Danzo's realization that Tsume would have no problem frolicking with the Nine Tailed Fox Demon.


	30. Delta Years - Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to Kishimoto's messed up timelines and ages, I have chosen to tinker with general ages of certain characters. I aged up Killer B's team, as well as Rin and Obito, because I can. (Rin and Obito would be two years and some months older than Kakashi.) This starts the chapters in which I really get to explore the County of Lightning (which, apparently, is an economic powerhouse in canon), and Kumo. It's fun to explore how geography and environment influences the formation of culture.

“Hi, Tsume-san!” Mitarashi Anko waved excitedly. She was seated on a closed rain barrel next to one of Konoha’s nondescript exits, and wore a heavy tan trench coat and a burgundy-colored knit scarf around her neck. Her hands were bare, and her shoulders were bent backwards slightly from the heavy knapsack she wore. Her hair was a splash of dark purple, and her scarf lime green – blindingly bright in their gloomy surroundings, pale in the waning twilight and overcast clouds. Even the few trees looked gloomy, thanks to their stark branches and darkened trunks.

Tsume laughed. “I should’ve known that the Hokage would pick you.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked for my annoying older brother, and instead he gives me my hyperactive little sister.”

“Oh. Is that why you’re also stuck with him?” Anko jabbed a thumb over to the enclosed guard station. Shikake was leaning against the building, bundled in two cloaks, a hat, a pair of gloves, and probably three pairs of socks. Shikake greatly disliked the cold. As medical director of the hospital, Shikake couldn’t be ordered to take missions that went beyond Fire Country. Tsume was surprised that he allowed the Hokage to talk him into this mission, since it was always his preference to stay where it was warm.

Most of the snow had melted the day before, and then froze into sheets of ice overnight. The cold seared Tsume’s lungs as she drew in a deep, invigorating breath. She actually preferred the biting cold over the sweltering heat, even though this type of cold was rare and unusual in Fire Country.

“Probably.” Tsume adjusted the sing on her back. Naruto and Kiba, both bundled against the cold, were tucked securely in the slingcarry and both still asleep. It had taken Tsume most of yesterday to rig something up when the other slingcarries only carried a single child. The rest of her supplies were kept in storage scrolls, which Kuromaru carried in the two knapsacks that Tsume attached to his harness. When given the choice of carrying supplies or children, Kuromaru readily picked the supplies. “And then there’s you.” She tried to keep her smile friendly, but knew it was probably just tired and worn, as she turned to her fourth team member.

Aburame Hotaru smiled back with the same level of tiredness. Her kikaichu buzzed more slowly than usual – Tsume suspected it had something to do with the cold. “It’s been a long time.” Hotaru’s voice was just as soft as Tsume remembered, light and high like a bell. “The Hokage was looking for volunteers, so I gladly stepped forward.” Her eyes were tender as they flickered to where Naruto was asleep, his face pressed against Tsume’s back. Tsume could feel the drool soaking through her cloak. Hotaru smelled of sorrow and love – not even the slightest hint of resentment or bitterness tainted her scent. “It would be an honor and a pleasure to accompany you and your sons.”

Tsume grinned. “And it will be an honor and a pleasure to be accompanied by the Fourth Hokage’s old teammate.” Then she threw a chummy arm around Hotaru. The Aburame were painfully pragmatic and nearly literal in their rationalization. As a whole, they were almost incapable of taking insults personally, which granted them a reputation for being responsible neutral parties, especially when working with emotionally volatile situations. Hotaru had inherited an unusual sense of whimsy from her civilian mother, along with eyes that weren’t painfully sensitive to the light – she was one of the few Aburame who didn’t wear sunglasses, which made it easier for her to sneak around without raising suspicion.

Hotaru brushed some of Tsume’s hair from her cheek. “Clan markings with no forehead protector?” Tsume felt some of the kikaichu slip from Hotaru’s hand and disappear into her hair. She suppressed the urge to vigorously scratch her scalp as she felt them tickling through the follicles.

“No forehead protector.”

“You’ll need one before we head into Lightning. Hokage’s orders.”

Tsume sulked as Hotaru riffled through the many pockets of her voluminous coat. “It just won’t be the same. You know that the forehead protector’s always been a touchy subject for me.” She never felt right with replacing her sister’s broken forehead protector.

Hotaru’s smile shifted into something warm and welcoming. “I know. That’s why I’m letting you borrow Minato’s.”

Tsume sucked in a surprised breath. “Really? You have Mooncalf’s forehead protector?”

Hotaru withdrew something from her pocket. The surface was dull and scratched, and the blue ties were frayed on the ends. “It’s not mine either – I only have it in safekeeping until I can give it to the person whom Minato would’ve wanted to have it.” She deftly tied the forehead protector around Tsume’s upper right arm. Tsume envied Hotaru’s long, slim fingers. “Which would be this little one, here.” Hotaru dropped a hand on Naruto’s fluffy hair. Tsume craned her neck in time to see three kikaichu slip into the fluff. Two more dropped off Hotaru’s elbow onto the back of Kiba’s neck. “However, I feel that Minato would be honored if you borrowed it – after all, you are Naruto’s mother now.”

Tsume threw her arms around Hotaru and squished her into a hug; she felt humbled and delighted by Hotaru’s support. The kikaichu’s buzz flared for a moment, as did the scent of surprise. Then Hotaru hugged Tsume back. “Thanks,” Tsume whispered.

Hotaru’s voice was even softer as she replied. “You have the full support and backing of my clan. By the way, my wife would love to have you over for dinner, you and your children, once we all get back home. She used to be Minato’s secretary, and she’s delighted with being able to see your newest child.”

Anko threw herself into the middle, snagging Hotaru and Tsume’s arms. “Are we done yet? Can we go now? This is the first time out of quarantine that I get to go further than two kilometers outside Konoha!” She dropped their arms and darted to Shikake’s side. “Come on, you old fuddy-duddy! We’re burning daylight!”

Shikake reluctantly peeled himself away from the building. “Such a bother,” he muttered. Tsume sidled up to him, and then deftly planted a quick kiss on his cheek. “What’s that for?”

“For a good morning.” It was rare that Tsume got to go on missions with her father, so she was looking forward to spending some quality time with him. She hoped he felt the same about her and his grandchildren. 

“Ah. Well, best to head out now because Anko rips the gate off in her eagerness to depart.”

“Wait, hold.” Tsume lightly touched Shikake’s arm. He sighed and ran a hand through his graying hair.

After a few moments, Kokoro slid into sight. “Oh, I’m glad I caught you before you left!” Kokoro had fitted her wheelchair with skis so it could glide over the ice and snow. Chakra strings glimmered from her fingers, as did the ten silver rings that she wore – one for each finger, each to help attach and guide a chakra string. She wore a brightly colored scarf made of various lime green and gold yarn around her neck, and a brightly multicolored blanket covered her unmoving legs. At her side, wearing a forehead protector around his neck like a collar, was Jinan, a former wolf-pup that Tsume had given Kokoro two years ago. He wasn’t wearing his harness today, so Kokoro clearly meant to spend the day in her wheelchair. “You forgot to hug me goodbye, Anko-chan.”

Anko pouted. “I’m a chuunin now, Auntie.” She glanced side to side, glaring at the other nin standing guard at the gate as they snickered, and dragged a toe across the ground. “I’m too old for hugs.”

Kokoro sniffed and turned her nose up, mouth twisting in amusement. “ _I’m_ not too old, and you’ll be gone for a while. Come now, give me a hug.”

Anko reluctantly shuffled over. “You make me do this every time I go on a mission, and the last time it was just to help a genin team with a D rank mission to pick up trash outside the walls.”

“You could’ve contracted tetanus while picking up trash. Every mission carries a risk. Humor your aunt – you’re the only thing I have left of my brothers.”

Anko bent over, tapped her hands against Kokoro’s shoulders as if this was a viable replacement for actual hugs, and then retreated in adolescent embarrassment as her cheeks flamed red. “We’re done now, right?”

Kokoro laughed and pulled her scarf off. “Such a brat,” she said affectionately. “Now, go away, I want to have a word alone with Tsume, and I don’t need an eavesdropper.”

“You’re going to talk about me, aren’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely. I have to tell Tsume here all about your bedtime routine, like the warm milk, Mister Nap-chan, and—”

Anko was outraged. “I don’t drink warm milk!” Her cheeks burned even brighter as she quickly looked side to side again, glaring at everyone who was watching. “And there’s no such thing as Mister Nap-chan!”

Kokoro snapped her scarf like a whip to lightly strike Anko’s knee. “Not everything is about you, you brat. Of course I’m not going to talk about you.” Anko retreated over to Hotaru’s side, kicking as the ice. Hotaru smiled indulgently at Anko’s sulk. Tsume greeted Jinan first, ruffling his ears, before she gave Kokoro a hug. She made sure to linger a few seconds longer than necessary, making up for Anko’s lack of contact. “First things first,” Kokoro whispered as she looped her green-and-yellow scarf around Tsume’s neck, “good luck. It’s a long trip to Lightning with two children _and_ my niece on tow.”

Even though Kokoro’s eyes and smile gave nothing away, Tsume could still smell the fear. “I’ll bring her back alive and in one piece.”

“I know. If there’s anyone who could make that promise and actually keep it, it would be you. You’ve always been the one who believed the most in Sakumo’s Rules. Anko hasn’t had any loss of control in over a year, but she also hasn’t been in any life-threatening situations.”

Well, at least none that Danzo hadn’t manufactured to help Anko learn control of her curse seal, of which Tsume was fairly sure the last time was about a month ago. And of which Kokoro probably didn’t know all that much about. Still, Tsume doubted that there would be too many situations that could be more threatening or deadly than what Danzo could create when he was feeling creatively sadistic.

“You’re talking about me! You said you wouldn’t!”

Kokoro raised her voice. “And Mister Nap-chan is currently tucked in the lower left flap of the knapsack…”

“Gah!” Anko slapped her hands over her ears. “I can’t hear you! Lalalalalala!”

Kokoro turned back to Tsume. “I just finished knitting this last week. I want you to take it with you. Your neck looks like it would get cold.” She fiddled and fussed with the scarf until she had the ends neatly tucked down the front of Tsume’s vest. “Good luck to the rest of the mission,” she added. “I know that you’ll do your best to stay out of trouble, except that won’t happen. You’ll wind up in an impossible situation, somehow get out of it by the skin of your teeth, and leave the rest of us wondering how the hell you managed to survive.”

“I would never!” Tsume protested.

Kokoro grinned, eyes twinkling without malice and her scent light and joyous. “You will, Tsume-chan. The thing is, even when _you_ stay out of trouble, trouble has this way of finding _you._ ”

Tsume felt too keen and aware of the heavy load of responsibility she bore – one precious scroll, folded into small squares and tucked down her shirt next to her heart, because she wanted Hyuuga Hizashi to feel the love Konoha had for him every step of this journey; one stern order to not start a war for the love of dead Hokages everywhere; and two young children in their slingcarries, asleep without any understanding of the world they were about to be carried into. “I’ll do my best.”

“I know. I’ll help Aunt Natsumi look after Sakumo-senpai while you’re gone.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you when I get back.” Tsume hugged Kokoro again. Kokoro smiled and waved one-handed at everyone as they left, because her other hand tightly gripped the blanket that covered her legs.

oOoOoOo

Traveling at full speed with minimal rests, the team would make it to the designated Lightning village of Shikotan in six days. Traveling at full speed with more frequent rests to feed, potty, and settle fussing toddlers, the team would reach their destination in eight days. That left them one day to find Jiraiya.

As they ran, Shikake explained that the Hokage’s intelligence indicated that Jiraiya was last seen in the Land of This, which was a little further of their beaten path than the time the Hokage had given them would allow.

“Really?” Tsume said. “I thought it was the Land of That.” She sure as hell wasn’t going to try sniffing him down.

Shikake rubbed his chin in thought, his eyes narrow. “He moves rather quickly when he wants to. For all we know, he could be in the Land of There by now.”

Anko cackled. “Any chances of him being in Hither or Yon?”

Hotaru groaned and nearly missed the branch she aimed for. “ _Please_ tell me it’s not going to be like this all the way to Lightning.”

“Wait, wait. I thought,” Tsume said, raising her hand in the air like she was back in the Academy, “that he was banned from the Land of There given how he seduced and scandalized the virginal Head Priestess. They’re the country run completely by the shrines, right?”

“It is, but bans have never stopped him before, now have they?” Shikake’s gait was smooth and fluid, like advancing shadows, as he led the way through the forest highway. The forest floor beneath them was slick of ice and would be noisy if walked on, instantly alerting anyone in their surroundings. “The Land of Here is too far off-target for us. If he’s not anywhere in a day’s travel, we’ll have to see him after you return from Kumo.”

“I can run really, really fast,” Anko insisted. “I won’t hold anyone back, so maybe we can gain some extra time if we pick up the speed.” She bubbled with nervous teenaged energy, eager to prove herself after struggling five years to overcome her curse seal and the prejudices that came with being tainted by Orochimaru. She and Kuromaru had the shortest legs of the team, but Kuromaru traveled with long strides, and Anko took short, rapid steps.

“Tsume, can you smell him?” Hotaru asked. She floated easily, fluttering like a butterfly from branch to branch, which were also coated in ice. They cracked beneath the passing weight of multiple shinobi.

“Still too far away,” Tsume answered, not wanting to. The resulting damage if she did would mean that she wouldn’t be able to maintain the breaknecking speed that Shikake had deliberately set after Anko made fun of him being a _fuddy duddy old snail._ Tsume felt like a lumbering porcupine beside her graceful teammates, easily unbalanced because of her two squabbling passengers. “I’ll have to wait until we reach the border before I can pinpoint his location.” She reached back and smacked the underside of Kiba’s sling. “Stop jabbing your brother!” she snapped.

“Yeah!” Naruto declared, before jabbing back at Kiba.

oOoOoOo

Jiraiya was in heaven, or at least as close to what would qualify as heaven on this dreadful earth. He had a gorgeous, curvy redhead hanging off his right arm, and a smoking hot blond with the cutest pair of wire-rimmed spectacles clinging to his left arm. Best of all, _they were willing to share_ , which he totally needed to get first hand experience with because an important scene in his current work in progress hinged on how the heroine had to team up with another woman in order to successfully seduce the main villain, who would eventually become the heroine’s love interest by the end of the book when an even greater villain rose to power.

Jiraiya carefully move his right arm, and downed the last little bit of his warmed sake. He set the cup down firmly on the counter. “Well, my lovelies?” he asked brightly, squeezing both of them tightly against his sides. They had such nice, curvy hips, so he dropped his hands lower to get in an extra squeeze.

Blondie giggled and stroked his chin. “Any time, _tiger._ ” Ooooh, he liked the effects of Blondie’s glasses glinting rather ominously in the bar’s dim light. It would make excellent foreshadowing, although it was certainly cliché.

Scarlet pressed herself more tightly against the length of his body and said nothing, but her warm breath stirred the hairs on his neck and stirred other lower areas.

Just as Jiraiya was gathering his feet beneath himself to stand, the bar door slammed open and a bulky brown whirlwind rushed through. “WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS THAT TWO-TIMING NO GOOD LYING DECEITFUL WORTHLESS SPERM DONOR?”

Uh oh. Someone was really pissed off – scenes at bars weren’t unusual, but were always kind of embarrassing to watch. Jiraiya was just glad it wasn’t him. “We should sneak off before this gets ugly,” he told his two hookups softly.

And then the bulky brown whirlwind planted herself in front of him. Heeeeey, he’d know that hedgehog hair just about anywhere! And, uh, why was she glaring at _him_? What did he do now?

“YOU!” A hand fisted the front of his jacket and yanked him forward until her nose smooshed against his. “I _would_ find you cozying up with these two floozies and drunk off your ass to boot! _I’ll_ put a boot up your ass!”

Jiraiya wasn’t drunk off his ass! He was seated very firmly, thank-you-very-much. He released Blondie to rub the blurriness out of his eyes, and then squinted more closely. “Did you just bring two children into the bar, Tsume?”

She didn’t use chakra to shake him, but there was still a lot of strength in her arms as she did just that. “THEY’RE YOUR CHILDREN. WHICH YOU WOULD KNOW IF YOU ACTUALLY CAME HOME MORE THAN ONCE A MONTH, STEAL MY MILK MONEY, AND THEN SKEDADDLE BEFORE RESPONSIBILITY HAS A CHANCE TO KICK YOU IN THE NUTS.”

Wait a minute… there was something very odd about this conversation, and now his eardrums hurt, too.

Tsume turned to Scarlet and said, in a very snide voice, “I do hope you aren’t thinking of sleeping with this one.” She repeatedly jabbed Jiraiya painfully hard in the chest, each jab punctuating her words. “He’s got at least three STDs that I know of, including tertiary syphilis and had already fathered at least seven children with three other women that I know of. Unfortunately, _I_ had twins.”

“I don’t have—ow!”

Tsume removed her heel from Jiraiya’s instep, just as Jiraiya’s latest hookups detached themselves from his arms.

“Wait!” he called after them as they quickly retreated, whispering together behind their hands and shooting him looks that would set his hair on fire if they could apply any chakra into their gaze. “I’m not – she isn’t – I, uh…” He was suddenly aware of the venomous looks he was getting from everyone else in the bar, including the bartender. He very much doubted that he was going to be allowed a consolation drink now that his nocturnal plans had been abruptly canceled. “Damn it.”

Tsume burst into tears. “You’ve gone and spent all my milk money on booze again, haven’t you? How can I feed my boys like this? I work my hands to the bone milking those yaks, and now I don’t have anything left. We’re going to starve!”

One of the boys leaned around Tsume’s shoulder and fiercely glared at Jiraiya. He had seen that glare somewhere before. Yeah, and that red hair was awfully familiar… “You’re a bad, bad man!” the child declared, pointing a finger accusingly at Jiraiya.

The other boy growled – those were definitely Inuzuka fangs. “You made Mommy cry.” He patted Tsume’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Mommy. I love you, and I’ll milk the yaks.”

The collective crowd in the bar said, “Aaaaaawwwww.” Then the crowd glared at Jiraiya. One patron, stumbling on rubbery legs, made a show of trucking a couple of ryo into Tsume’s pocket. “Here ya go, Jo-chan,” he said, giving Jiraiya a withering look. 

Tsume blew her nose into Jiraiya’s sleeve, and tried to look contrite and humble. “I couldn’t possibly accept your kind generosity…”

“S’all right, Jo-chan. My sister’s raising a kid all on her own, ‘cause her husband’s a deadbeat loser, too.”

“Now, wait a minute—”

Tsume threw her arms around the man and hugged him tight. “Thank you so much! Now my boys can eat for the next week.” She gave Jiraiya a contemptuous glare. “No thanks to _you_ ,” she added, her words dripping with scorn. Then, still dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her brightly colored green-and-gold scarf, she retreated from the bar. A small voice followed her: “Can we afford carrots now?”

Jiraiya nearly tripped over his feet, hurrying after her. “Wait, Tsume!” The air was cold, and night had settled as he exited the building. The streetlights were oil lamps that sputtered and flickered up and down the dirt lane. He paused outside the door and looked around, not seeing anyone. He concentrated a moment, and then turned and looked upward.

Tsume cheerfully waved at him from the bar’s roof.

One sloppy jump brought him nearly to the roof. He clung to the edge for a moment, feet scrambling with chakra for purchase against the slick stone, before Tsume grabbed his belt and hauled him over the edge. He spilled onto the roof, and then rolled over onto his back. The night skies were currently overcast – not even the moon as visible. Tsume popped into his line of vision, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

“Was that scene really necessary?” Jiraiya asked, trying not to pout and whine at the same time. “I’ve never slept with you – in fact, you’re one of the few women I’d _never_ consider sleeping with!” Part of that was because he would always cherish that confused little child with eyes wide beneath the thick bandages wrapping her skull, whom he made laugh with a ridiculous puppet play even though she couldn’t remember who he was most of the time, and the other part of that was because he had no intention of horning in on another man’s territory, even if the other man was neck-deep in denial.

“Anything that amuses an Inuzuka is necessary. Being entertained is always far better for everyone all around than being bored. Besides, I had to get your interest in a way that wouldn’t alert anyone that we’re from Konoha. Thanks, Kuromaru.” Tsume accepted a scuffed-up forehead protector that her ninken held out to her and secured it around her upper arm. Kuromaru stuck a cold nose against Jiraiya’s ear and sniffed. Then he huffed, wagged his tail dismissively, and turned away from Jiraiya.

Well, that was most certainly true about keeping an Inuzuka entertained. Especially when said Inuzuka happened to be Tsume. Jiraiya could remember some of the damage control that _he_ had to run when Tsume was a teenager, because Sakumo was in no position to by that time, Natsumi was flat-out amused, and Danzo pulled a very good disappearing act. Jiraiya wasn’t too sure how he managed to assume such responsibility for Sakumo’s team.

The worst, he thought mournfully, was when Tsume decided to recruit his own team as a source of free entertainment. Hotaru and Osamu were sometimes quick enough to disappear, but somehow Minato let himself get dragged into the girls’ schemes time and time again, sometimes because Minato was Tsume’s fourth best friend in the entire world (as Minato once told Jiraiya), but mostly because he had a huge crush on Kushina (which Minato never openly admitted to Jiraiya).

“Okay,” Jiraiya started, enjoying the slow buzz of alcohol in his veins for one last brief moment before he would scrub it away with several pulsing washes of nature chakra (ha! Take _that_ , Tsunade-hime), “so did you make that scene in the bar because you were bored and just happened to be in the area, or did you really need to talk to me and couldn’t wait for a message to get through?”

Tsume raised her head for a moment, nostrils flaring as she took a breath, and then her voice dropped into a whisper as she crouched close. “I’m on my way to Kumo – have to deliver something priceless to the Raikage – and I figured I’d just swing by and see my new son’s godfather. I was also hoping you could check out a couple of interesting seals.”

Wait… Jiraiya sat upright and squinted more closely to the redhaired child whom Tsume carried on her back.

Bright blue eyes stared back beneath a mop of fluffy red hair. He was fairly sure that red wasn’t natural, given the blond eyebrows, but he couldn’t tell if it was dye or genjutsu.

“You didn’t.” Jiraiya’s voice was flat. How did she manage to duplicate Kushina’s color? Then, “You _did._ ” He distinctly remembered giving Tsume the green light for assuming responsibility for his godson, as well as some horticultural factoids on cacti. Surely the Hokage must’ve given permission for Tsume to bring their jinchuuriki to the country where their _last_ jinchuuriki had been kidnapped and dragged off to; elsewise the strongest team of ANBU would’ve been dispatched to bring back the child.

Tsume touched his shoulder as a strange look filled her eyes. “You have to. I don’t know if it’s me or him, but all I can smell is _that fox_. Oyubi didn’t even notice the scent, but my daughter and I could. I’ve had to increase my sensitivity higher than I normally would to detect anything around it, and I can’t keep up with that strain.”

_(“Tsunade-hime said that her threshold will decrease with age – she will die, piece by piece, little by little, each time she exceeds her limit, like a tree ruthlessly culled back until all that’s left is a dead stump.”)_

And Tsume, if he was unable to somehow fix the problem, would willingly accept dying piece by piece, little by little, reducing herself to an overeager stump.

“All right. Let’s get into a private area, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Tsume grinned and rustled through her hair. “Already on it.” She withdrew a kikaichu from her hair. “Shikake and Hotaru were scouting for an area earlier, and I think they found one. Now we just have to follow this little guy here to Anko, who’ll lead us to Shikake and Hotaru. I think he’s named Bo.”

oOoOoOo

The nice, private area was a large crevice in a canyon several kilometers outside of town. The Land of Here was a small country not too far from the Waterfall Country, nestled deep in the same mountain range where Waterfall existed, except the mountainsides seemed barren without the same lush trees that Waterfall had. It was chilly, as Waterfall was wont to be in winter, but not unbearably so since the cold snap had eased up three days ago. Here was much windier than Waterfall, especially without the barricade of trees, and the wind had blown away the latest dusting of snow that had fallen, piling huge snow drifts like miniature foot hills. The moon had already set, but the night sky was clear and dotted with millions of stars as the clouds cleared away – Jiraiya admired the beauty as he felt a sense of maudlin settle over him like mist over a valley floor. They were like diamonds scattered on midnight velvet. A lonely wind moaned as it rushed over the craggy mountainsides.

Hmmm, he could use this as the opening scene in his book, Jiraiya decided as they quietly snuck across the countryside, carefully hugging the ground and skimming the snow to prevent visible silhouettes against the skyline. His heroine would be lonely, wondering about the point of her existence, of how life as an assassin brought no meaning…

Tsume snapped him out of his musing by punching him in the shoulder, and introducing Anko to him, who had been waiting just outside the village for Tsume’s arrival.

“Ah, you’re Kokoro-chan’s niece! I’ve heard so much about you!”

Anko eyed him suspiciously. “As have I about _you_ , buster.”

Jiraiya turned to Tsume. “She seems awfully rude to be a Mitarashi.” Kokoro and her brothers had been notoriously polite, smiling and courteous while they ruthlessly extracted information piece by excruciating piece.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Tsume was making hot porridge on the run to feed the two children. She must’ve picked up some tips from the Uchiha clanswomen. “I’ve been working with Anko on the curse seal that Orochimaru stuck on her, so I was hoping you’d also take a look at the modifications that Danzo put on it and see how they’re holding up.”

Jiraiya suspected that Anko probably got her rudeness from Tsume. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“As long as the seal is the _only_ thing you’re checking out on me,” Anko added, balancing her hands pointedly on her hips.

Jiraiya coughed. “You’re a little too young for me, kid. Come back when you’re eighteen, and then we’ll talk about the checking out I’d like to do – ow! Did you just pull my hair?”

Anko retreated out of Jiraiya’s reach. Some of his white hairs were still caught between her fingers.

“She’s a little sensitive,” Tsume told Jiraiya as she skidded to a stop. She twisted around to hand the plastic bowels of hot porridge to the two boys. “We need to hold still so the boys can eat safely. I learned _that_ the hard way.”

“Is that why Kiba has a black eye?”

“Yeah. Accidentally jabbed himself in the eye with the spoon,” Tsume said. She crouched down and quickly cleaned the little sauce pan with water from her canteen. Without saying anything, Kuromaru was instantly beside Tsume. She carefully packed the supplies away in the knapsack that was firmly attached to his harness. Jiraiya was never quite sure how Sakumo managed it, but he always made sure that Tsume had a well-stocked larger with all the appropriate cooking utensils stored in a storage scroll whenever they ran missions.

“So, I take it that you’re not bringing the children with you to Kumo.” Jiraiya knew _why_ she was going. All of his underground ears indicated that the Raikage required a Hyuuga corpse to keep the peace, although Jiraiya knew that Konoha wasn’t going to hand over the Head of the Hyuuga clan himself. He briefly wondered who the substitute was.

“Nope. They’ll stay with the team and Kuromaru at Shikotan.”

“Wait – so Kuromaru isn’t going with you?”

The only time that Tsume ever left Kuromaru behind for missions was when she had to seduce someone. Jiraiya hoped that Tsume wasn’t going to try using her siren seal on the Raikage… Ooooh, idea! Maybe he could try something different and put a siren seal on his main villain, so then the _seductress_ would become the _seduced_.

“The Raikage said only _one_ Konoha nin would be allowed into Kumo. Kuromaru, technically speaking, is a Konoha shinobi.” Tsume eyed Jiraiya. “I know what you’re thinking, and the Hokage already told me no, I’m not allowed to seduce the Raikage. I’m going to follow the directives to the very letter, won’t make any waves or ask any questions, be on my utmost best behavior, and do the delivery just as expected. That’s all.”

Jiraiya could respect that. There was something to be said about following the letter of the law, even if you assassinated the spirit. “And you decided, since you were in the area, to pop on by with the two people in Konoha whose seals no one else was willing to touch?”

“Danzo touches Anko’s seal all the time.”

Jiraiya was fairly sure that Danzo’s touching was purely professional. The Heaven seal was nothing like the siren seal. “But not Naruto’s.”

Tsume stayed crouching. She clasped her hands together and looked across the dark horizon, and then at the stars, then she fiddled with Kuromaru’s harness. “I didn’t ask,” she said finally, looking everywhere but at Jiraiya. “I figured that you would be the best one for the job, though, especially when I’m going to need a Thunder God seal on the boys, just in case something happens.”

“A what seal?”

Tsume pulled something from her vest pocket as her face lit up with hopeful cheer. Jiraiya hadn’t seen one of those daggers in years. “One of these.”

The triple-bladed dagger stared at him. Jiraiya felt awkward, like his arms were attached backwards. “Sure, if you don’t mind me getting back to you in about a few weeks, Tsume. I’m good, and I can work with Anko and Naruto’s seals, but I’ve studied those structures for _years_.” He didn’t want to break apart and discover the secrets of Minato’s greatest techniques. The very idea made his insides curl with horror – some secrets should never be broken. “Put it away. I’m not going to do anything about the seal or Minato’s kunai.”

Jiraiya supposed, as he watched Tsume wilt with disappointment, that an Inuzuka really couldn’t understand that some secrets deserved to stay such as a legacy of respect and honor; Tsume was used to only hiding secrets out of shame or necessity. “If it’s about protecting your boys, I can assure their safety while you’re gone.” He hated to see Tsume wilt for any reason – he cherished those souls who managed to shine even in the greatest darkness and despair, and Tsume was one of the few still alive. “Where’d you get that?”

Minato had also shone brightly – quiet, steady, and firm, like velvet-wrapped steel, even on the battlefield.

Tsume turned the dagger around in her hands. “Minato gave it to me, way before the war broke out. One of his first prototypes. He said that if I ever needed him, he’d be there in an instant for me. And the one time I actually used it was the one time he probably wished that I had gone to someone else for help.”

“Huh. What happened?”

Tsume flipped the blade and balanced it with the extended middle blade, point down, on the tip of her index finger. The point made an indentation but didn’t pierce her skin. “I went into labor when I was out in the field, hauling a legless Suna nin with me.”

…. Oh. Well, _that_ explained the comment that Minato had made out of the blue one day to Jiraiya. (“ _You know, there’s a certain joy, a certain satisfaction of bringing life into the world. As a shinobi, I always thought it was about ending life. But it’s also about preserving lives, and helping new ones come into being. By the way, I can safely say that I am not cut out to be a midwife. Way too much body fluids and blood involved_.”)

Anko looked interested. “You mean the Fourth Hokage helped you with Hana-chan’s birth?”

“Sort of, but not really. It was kinda a fiasco from the start. Your aunt and Kushina and I, we had a mission to deliver storage scrolls of supplies to Suna, since their supply chain was bottlenecked with how enemy forces were teaming up in the Third Shinobi War. It was really bad for Suna, because for the first time in, like, a hundred years, someone also broke the Water Treaty and poisoned an oasis. Of course, the Suna team didn’t realize it was poisoned until they started dropping like flies.”

Anko brightened. “Oh, was this were you met Sasori-kun?” Jiraiya vaguely recalled the details of how Sakumo’s apprentice managed to rescue and befriend Chiyo’s grandson, accidentally strengthening the treaty between Suna and Konoha. They were so incredibly different in personalities and philosophies that their friendship was a mystery to anyone who knew them both. A poisoned oasis was absolutely unheard of sabotage in Wind, not when water was life, and anyone who attempted to sabotage the sources of water were an international concern that needed to be dealt with swiftly and with extreme prejudice. (It was Kiri, he recalled, and Iwa – which was allied with Kiri – was so outraged over the sabotage of an oasis that they turned on Kiri. And because they turned on Kiri, they had no support to fall back to when Minato wiped out over a thousand Iwa nin.)

“Yup. It’s also how he lost his legs. Anyway, he was the one survivor, and we figured he would get better medical care in our Konoha hospital than in the Suna hospital after the emergency amputations, so I took Sasori cross-country while Kushina and Kokoro continued onward to Suna with their delivery. Only, halfway through River Country, I went into labor, and Sasori was _so_ not going to help. I used this prototype to summon Minato, because I didn’t quite know what else to do. Mooncalf panicked, grabbed us, flashed us back to his team, and had Rin assist me. They were scouting over on the north edge of Fire Country at the time.”

Tsume grinned. “Kakashi was _so_ embarrassed. Obito…” A shadow briefly crossed her face, and Tsume scratched Kuromaru behind his ears. “Dear, sweet Obito was more of an assistance to Rin than my own nephew, fetching water and boiling it to get clean rags for Rin, although Obito accidentally burned off his own eyebrows in his haste to light the fire. He and Rin were just these ten year old kids, more used to ending lives than bringing them into the world. Kakashi insisted on keeping watch, but Minato told him that he couldn’t keep a successful watch from over a kilometer away. I think that Minato wanted to take the watch. He stayed though, because I really wanted someone’s hand to hold. Sasori wound up using his chakra strings to hand Rin the supplies she needed. Sasori isn’t all that bad, for an assistant midwife.”

Jiraiya could imagine the scene in his mind. It was easy enough – Obito would’ve been stumbling everywhere, face beet red, but eager to try and help Rin and Tsume. Rin would’ve been nervous and unsure of herself, having not even yet reached the decision to become a med-nin. Minato would’ve been hunched over and embarrassed/shy – a common state anytime Sakumo’s team was involved, but probably made even worse because of his own youth. Minato had been the youngest jounin to ever have a genin team, at just sixteen years of age. Kakashi would’ve been hiding, and Tsume – quite naturally – would’ve been in the very center of activity, the very center of attention. Jiraiya imagined Sasori hanging off to the side, looking very much like he wished the poison had killed him before Team Sakumo reached the oasis, and resigning himself to being the only person who hadn’t lost his mind in bumbling panic.

His eyes drifted to Naruto, who was tilted back in his sling and attempting to lick the bowl clean. “More!” Naruto declared, waving the bowl in the air. His face fell when Tsume snatched the bowl away. “Aaaawwww.”

“You can have some more when we reach our camp. It’s just a snack to tide you over,” she said, wetting the bowl with her canteen and wiping it clean with a rag. She did the same with Kiba’s bowl, and then quickly cleaned the two little spoons. “These are so much easier to use on the run than chopsticks,” she told Jiraiya proudly, before tucking everything securely into Kuromaru’s knapsack. She straightened from her crouch, and then stretched her back.

Naruto and Kiba giggled as they swayed in their slings.

“Ready to run?” Tsume asked Anko.

Anko laughed and darted forward. “Last one back is a Suna puppeteer with wooden legs!”

oOoOoOo

“So,” Jiraiya began as he looked at the seal blooming on Naruto’s stomach, “you drew the short straw?”

Shikake snorted. “Nah. I wanted to gather certain medicinal herbs that only grow in Lightning. It’s a rare opportunity to scour Shikotan’s different markets. Best scenario, I can make penpal friends who will mail me some of the herbs. After all, I’ll just be the unassuming widowed grandfather, watching after my two grandsons. I’ll be a hit with all the old ladies in Shikotan while Tsume is away.”

The campsite was in a crevice that only had one viable entrance. It would be easy to pin the party in place, except Jiraiya knew that the adults could climb the steep walls up and out as a last resort – the mountains were made up of beige and red shale that crumbled easily with pressure, and would be difficult to scale with chakra. Doing so would require the lightest, most precise touch. At least the single entrance made it easy for Hotaru to defend by sending a wave of deadly kikaichu forward to wipe out any enemy in the event of attack. Years of water runoff from sparse spring melt had left a pile of shale chips and pieces at the bottom of the crevice, and it was highly uncomfortable to kneel on. Scraggly bushes grew in the cracks that lines the crevice’s walls, and a single lone pine tree stood in the center, bravely insistent on existing against all odds.

Jiraiya couldn’t help but admire that stubborn little pine tree. He _liked_ stubborn things. They were great examples of why people were always living through the worst, persisting in clinging to desperate hope. Success always tasted so much sweeter.

Naruto giggled as Jiraiya’s fingers brushed his bellybutton. “Ah. I would’ve figured that the backup would be a little more… _more._ ”

Hotaru snorted. “You mean energetic?” She pointedly did not look at Anko, who was casually climbing the pine tree.

“Well, not exactly.” Jiraiya studied the seal modifier that allowed the Kyuubi’s chakra to slowly drain and mix with Naruto’s chakra. The edges had deteriorated and warped – he didn’t know if that was due to someone deliberately tampering with the seal, or because Naruto might have gotten into a situation where he unknowingly used the Kyuubi’s chakra to survive. It was causing a higher level of the Kyuubi’s caustic chakra to constantly leak, which would explain why Tsume complained about the Kyuubi’s scent being so strong. It also probably made people more sensitive to chakra extremely nervous, being so close to Naruto. They could feel the presence of the Kyuubi, but only able to pinpoint it to the three year old child. Naruto’s seal needed to be patched up for _Naruto’s_ sake, not just for Tsume’s sense of smell. “I think I was expecting a more masculine group.”

Shikake twitched.

“But it’s a very good group. After all,” Jiraiya continued as he uncapped his chakra ink, “I trained Hotaru-chan myself. She’s an outstanding kunoichi.” She had managed to survive everything that her two male teammates hadn’t, which didn’t really surprise him. The Aburame and the Nara clans had the largest number of living retired ninjas. Probably because they were the clans that produced the most sensible ninjas.

He traced the edge of Naruto’s seal for a brief moment, and then reached for his brush. He could shore up the modifier, or tweak it just a little to allow it to expand in times of danger, and then shrink back to its original size when Naruto was no longer in need of the Kyuubi’s chakra. He decided on the latter as it was more beneficial – it would prevent deterioration in the future.

“Minato and Osamu always got blamed along with you. _I_ could blend in with the crowd of angry women when they discovered you were peeping in on them at the hot springs,” Hotaru said with an amusing lilt in her voice. “And the changing rooms. _And_ the—”

Jiraiya growled and pinned Naruto with his knee. “Yes, yes. Point well taken, Hotaru-chan. Now hold still, brat. You wiggle around like a worm on hook.” Naruto flipped over and exposed his bare backside to Jiraiya. Holding the brush between his teeth, Jiraiya righted Naruto around. “Shomeone hold him,” he grumbled. Shikake slowly moved to do so.

Anko somersaulted out of the tree, and tried to brush the pine needles free of her clothes. Like the tree itself, the pine needles were stubborn. “I’ll never bathe _again_.”

“I tried that,” Tsume told Anko. “Never bathing or eating the Uchiha barbeque. My resolve didn’t last all that long. Besides, now you smell like pitch, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend the whole not-bathing thing.” Tsume tied her hair in a ponytail on the top of her head. It was startlingly easy to see the Nara genes in Tsume’s face, with the chin and eyes that she had inherited, and the spiky Inuzuka hair that was similar to the Nara hair. Without the Inuzuka clan markings on her face, Tsume looked more of her father than she did of Inuzuka Shinzou. Jiraiya was secretly delighted to see the resemblance.

Anko brushed the back of her neck with her fingertips. “I’m just glad that the snake put my seal on my neck, instead of any lower.”

Jiraiya removed his brush and quickly swiped the saliva onto Naruto’s discarded coat. “Yeah, well, you’re next.”

“I don’t see why you have to look at it. Danzo-sensei’s been keeping on top of the seal.”

All the more reason for Jiraiya to double-check it. He wouldn’t put it past Danzo to take advantage of a seal that he could experiment different combinations and modifications on. In fact, he really didn’t trust Danzo’s boundaries and ethics when it came to anything involving Orochimaru. “Never hurts to have a second set of eyes looking over it.”

Well, between his former genin student, a chuunin bearing the Heaven seal, one of the greatest living Inuzuka ninken, and an experienced Nara jounin medic, Jiraiya felt certain that anyone who tried to kidnap or do any harm to Tsume’s two children while she was gone would wind up very dead, or wishing that they were.

Nonetheless, after patching up Naruto’s seal, he summoned two little innocuous toads that could ride along with Naruto and Kiba, and reverse-summon the boys to him in case of danger and loss of the other teammates.

oOoOoOo

Killer B wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen upon his arrival to Shikotan. His brother had given him a rather confused description on what to expect or maybe not to expect, what to look out for, or what ought to be ignored with the Konoha kunoichi he was to accompany, before A finally gave in and allowed Killer B to read the dossier. Reading the dossier really hadn’t lessened the confusion before Killer B decided it was high time to depart. (He totally _did not run_ from Kumo. It was a swift departure, in order to make good time. Yeah.)

Killer B’s team was currently a small three-man team. He brought along Darui because A had insisted. A said that Darui was less likely to overreact to the impulsive and hot-natured personality that the Konoha nin may or may not be in control of. A also brought along one of his apprentices – a fourteen year old orphaned, barely-official chuunin, named Karui, who really needed to get out more often. Killer B felt sorry for Karui, since she and his other apprentices was always stuck in Kumo at his side, so opportunities for fun and adventure rarely happened. Regardless of his brother’s personal misgivings, Killer B felt this was the perfect vacation for both of them.

Shame that his darling Samui and sweet Omoi had to come down with some sort of stomach bug a few days before A gave Killer B the mission, as he otherwise would’ve brought along all of his cute apprentices. Instead, Samui and Omoi were left in the somewhat-questionable hands of Nii, who was feeling overly maternal. (Nii had said something about her biological clock ticking like an exploding seal with a timer attached to it. Killer B’s hasty departure _may_ have been partly due to this announcement – he had seen how Nii was eyeing his next door neighbor, and there was no helping with that level of obliviousness.)

“I ain’t scared of no Konoha nin!” Karui declared hotly with a chop of her hand. Her red hair was cropped close to her head, which was a sad sight to Killer B. It was so thin and wispy and she had such an extreme widow’s peak that his darling apprentice, with her stern and serious expression, often looked more like a balding old man. Unfortunately, Karui had been keeping her hair severely short ever since Nii accidentally burned it all away two years ago, and no amount of praises, compliments, cajoling, or outright bribery would make Karui change her mind about growing it out. “I don’t care if she’s the high muckity-muck of trackers or dogs or whatever!”

“Technically,” Darui mumbled, “Inuzuka-san is. Of both trackers and dogs.”

They stood on a tall bluff that overlooked Shikotan. It was twilight, and the large village was already lighting lanterns. From this distance, Killer B could smell the wool from the textile mills, could hear the click-clacking of the looms and cards that were manned every hour, even through the night. Shikotan was a very busy, sleepless city, centered around the cleaning, prepping, spinning, and weaving of wool into battings, bolts, and garments that were sold to every country on the continent.

The steady stream of visitors, bearing their loads of wool on carts, horses, and pack llamas or alpacas, entered and left the city at all hours, closely crowding the merchants who exported the wool to other garment factories, or to their shops or warehouses in other villages and countries. The large river that flowed past, fed by multiple mountain streams and creeks, was useful for the factory machinations and washing of wool, but too rough and shallow to float barges. Almost all transportation was on two or four legs.

The streets were thick with workers, many from poor, faraway villages, working hard in the factories in order to send money back home. Supplies of food – grains, fruits and vegetables, livestock for meat – were also brought in daily, because the poor soil conditions of shale and clay made it difficult to grow enough food in the surrounding area to feed the sizeable village, although potatoes, turnips, pumpkins, squash, and cabbages seemed to thrive well enough in the soil, despite the north’s short growing season.

Killer B didn’t need his heightened senses as a jinchuuriki to detect the putrid stench of thousands of humans crammed into close-quarter areas.

The Hokage had chosen well for a town in which his Konoha nin could stay. As a well-populated hub of trade for textiles, owing to having the largest number of textile mills and factories in Lightning, the Konoha nin could easily blend in with very little notice and suspicion. That would mean they were less likely to cause problems in Lightning, and could easily avoid fights with Kumo nin. It could also make it easier for the Konoha nin to get away with causing trouble, though. Shikotan had the highest crime rate of any village in Lightning, after all.

The hard life in the factories was cause for a high turnover of workers, many of whom were lured by the promise of available work and quick money. It was easy to take advantage of the uneducated, backwater bumpkins, and the lure of easy victims brought forth swindlers and scammers of every shape and size. The steady hustle-and-bustle of trade and commerce made Shikotan a hub for black market trades. The criminal underworld thrived there, despite the great number of policemen that the Lightning Daimyo had in Shikotan. It was the rule, not the exception, that the police were as corrupt as the criminals. 

The thriving criminal underworld attracted ruthless, unsavory characters from every walk of life, including a number of missing nin from every Hidden Village. And where there was missing nin, so was there a number of hunter nin and bounty hunters. A had as many as ten teams rotating through Shikotan in the past few years, half of them genin, for a thorough experience in stealth, tactics, swindling, pinpoint attacks, and general survival. A selected the most successful teams that went through the rotation for the international chuunin exams, which meant that the Kumo always gave an exceptional showing at the exams. They therefore maintained the pride that the Lightning Daimyo had in his Hidden Village, and steadily attracted business and contracts from other countries.

Killer B shook his head to step away from his train of thought. His primary focus would be on Inuzuka-san. He had never personally met her, although he remembered running away from Inuzuka Natsumi a number of years ago – when the eight-tailed ox demon says to run, one doesn’t ordinarily stick around to argue. He had also fought and killed a few Inuzuka women and their ninken during the Third Shinobi War – they were fierce, admirable kunoichi, every bit the fine warriors that he was proud to have fought and defeated, and he looked forward to escorting their Clan Head.

Killer B pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. As he did so, Gyuuki raised its head metaphorically, as if testing scents. _I think I know this one, from long ago…_

“Our team goes forward // the Konoha nin we meet // at Shepherds Way Inn.”

He ignored Karui’s comment, snide and under her breath, “I wish Sensei would get over this damn haiku kick.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus material on why Tsume can accidentally trap Sasori and not die for it (a flash back to the first chapter, when Tsume was using the same crooning voice on Naruto as she had on a trapped deer, snared wolves, and a snared Sasori).


	31. Delta Years - Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean to go so long without posting anything. My husband has decided that now would be as good a time as any to pack up our house, sell it, and move us 2200 miles/4800km across the US, all while I'm working full time. My stress levels are, needless to say, rather high. (I did agree to this, but had wanted to move after, you know, I have the baby, and not while pregnant. He figured that the market is really great right now, and we'll get more for our home., than if we wait.)

“This place is the pits,” Tsume muttered as she lumbered through the narrow street. Paper lanterns, suspended from ropes that crisscrossed the street, swayed slightly from the air current created by the bustling crowd. Tsume broke a hand that tried riffling through her pocket without looking to see who it was – she could smell the intent just fine without looking – and then secured the straps on her slings a little tighter. She didn’t trust her sons not to be kidnapped any more than her empty wallet to remain undisturbed in her pocket.

There was a shriek of pain behind her. Tsume didn’t look, and neither did the people in the crowd that she pushed through.

“Anko!” Hotaru’s voice was sharp. “That’s the second eye you’ve jabbed out tonight!”

“And that’s the _fifth_ attempt someone made at pinching my knapsack!” Anko contended. “The next person I’m just going to castrate!” At that loud announcement, the crowd seemed to do some hasty thinning.

“At least do it where the blood isn’t going to hit my coat. I didn’t bring a spare.”

“You’d think these idiots would know better than the pick a nin’s pocket. I thought this was the cesspit of missing nin!” Anko’s declaration was followed by another shriek of pain. “Yeah, see if you ever try to pull _that_ move again, buster!”

Tsume whined. “Why aren’t we in the nicer part of town?”

“Because,” Shikake mumbled, “the Hokage said a nicer place wasn’t in our pay-grade or budget.” Shikake walked ahead and just to Tsume’s left, his head ducked and his body languid as he slipped through the crowd, easily gliding into areas that Tsume would’ve thought had no room for anyone. Kuromaru followed Shikake, and no one bothered to try stealing from Kuromaru. The sharp-studded harness, the Konoha forehead protector displayed openly from around his throat, and the bristling fur at his haunches all indicated that he was far more deadly than the average two-legged predator roaming the streets at the moment.

Wait… not in their _pay-grade_? The next time that Tsume had to haul one of their dead family members to a foreign village to be turned over as part of the price for peace, Tsume was going to bully Hyuuga Hiashi into paying for a five-star resort with personal masseuses and onsite daycare.

Kiba screamed bloody murder as someone snatched his stuffed puppy away.

Tsume winced as she heard bones cracking beneath the screams, before Kiba settled quietly when Anko handed the stuffed puppy back. “Should be ashamed of yourself,” Anko said, her voice distance because her back was turned to Tsume, “trying to steal from a toddler! Go pick on an adult your own size – like that bouncer at the bar, over there.”

“Can we travel on the rooftops next time?” Tsume whined again. She wished now that she had bugged, annoyed, and otherwise forced Jiraiya to slap the Flying Thunder God Seal on her sons. She felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea of leaving her two sons behind in this village, even if they were going to be under the reliable care of Shikake and Hotaru. Hotaru could instantly disappear with the boys in a moment of danger, evading any and all attempts to track them, Kuromaru would stay at the boys’ side at all times to act as defender, and Shikake and Anko would ruthlessly dispatch any danger that attempted to follow. It also made Tsume feel marginally better that Jiraiya was only a deliberate half-day away from entering Shikotan after them, so he could maintain a close watch on the boys.

“No. Rooftops would have a higher number of shinobi. Most of the people down here are civilians – even the low-lives.”

Tsume wished she had known exactly what kind of place Shikotan was like. She had never been to the village before, but had thought it was be more like drab, dismal Tetsuzanshi. The iron smelters there required a workforce with a higher skill level than the textile mills, which meant that the turnover wasn’t as high, and many of the miners stayed in camps close to the mines. The workforce for Shikotan didn’t live in specialized camps set up outside the village, but were instead all crammed within the stone walls. Its population was roughly the same as Konoha’s, and it dwelled in a space only a third in size.

If Tsume had known that Shikotan was like this, she almost gladly would’ve left Naruto and Kiba with Danzo. As it was, if she had known that she was going to be up and close and personal with these reeking odors, she would’ve tried talking to Hokage into sending someone with a less keen olfaction. She was at the lowest her sensitivity could go, and it still wasn’t enough to keep the horrendous stench from clogging her nostrils. She was going to be smelling the stink for _years_.

“We’re almost there.” No one seemed to try stealing from Shikake. Tsume wondered if there was some sort of secret signal that he was giving off, something that said, _touch this and die a death in which no one will ever discover your remains._ She was jealous. (Tsume elbowed the next pickpocket hard in the side, and then twisted the pickpocket’s nose as he doubled forward in breathless surprise.)

Two long, agonizing minutes later, they found themselves in front of a suspicious establishment. Tsume could smell the drunken revelry before she even heard it. Just as Shikake approached the front door, the large window shattered as a body flew through it, plowed through seven other people on the street, , and finally collided with the wall on the other side of the street. After a brief heartbeat, nine other people flew out of the window, also colliding with the wall, and another six desperate crawled over the shattered glass to escape. Their fear was rancid and their eyes wide as they dashed around the Konoha nin.

A blond giant loomed in the window, his sunglasses glinting ominously in the questionable lamp light. “Anyone else care // to cross and double-deal here // and meet my fury?”

A tiny person with wonderfully red hair popped up beside the giant’s elbow and squeaked, “Yeah! Yeah! So there!”

Shikake straightened into a comfortable slouch. “Killer B, I presume?” he asked.

The giant folded his hands and glared down at them – he had an odd dual scent, similar to Naruto’s after Jiraiya had tinkered with the seal, that was primarily human with a hint of bull, mixed with a personal scent of freshly-washed linen and boysenberries. For all the ferocious glare that he gave over the rim of his sun glasses, his emotions smelled placid and calm. Shikake wasn’t particular tall, especially for a Nara, and Hotaru and Anko were even shorter than Tsume. (And Tsume had made sure that her ponytail sat at the highest point of her head, which officially made her exactly 0.8 cm taller than her father. When he was slouching.) “You must be ninja // from the depths of hidden leaves // long distance traveled,” the giant replied.

Shikake squinted, almost unsure of how to respond to the odd speech patterns. Tsume’s interactions with Kumo nin was limited, given that lengthy conversations in a clashing battle were rare, so she was unsure if this was typical.

Naruto, Jiraiya’s toad sitting on his hair, waved from around Tsume’s shoulders. “Hi! You’re funny. I like you!”

That was cue for Kiba, his face tear-streaked from briefly losing his stuffed puppy. “I wanna go home, Mommy!” Kiba then nibbled on her ponytail.

Tsume decided that standing out in the street and breaking questing hands was for the birds. “Hi there,” she said as she walked forward, and then slipped through the broken window. She carefully squeezed past the giant and his miniature pipsqueak (gosh, that one had the most unfortunately thin hair; for once, Tsume was grateful that she had looked like a rabid hedgehog when she was that age), and trudged to where the innkeeper stood close by, looking appalled at his broken window. “I’m starving, and I hope you don’t plan on serving me that rancid slop over there.” She pointed at the bubbling cauldron that hung over the smoky fireplace.

The innkeeper puffed up with indignation, wiping his hands on the filthy apron he wore. “Madam, I serve the _finest_ rabbit stew in all of Shikotan! The rabbits are _fat_ and _juicy_ , the potatoes and cabbage _ripened_ to _perfection_ , and the broth seasoned with the _finest_ spices that Lightning has to offer!”

Most of the common area was empty of witnesses. A few cowed factory workers huddled over their clay bowls, a trio of hard-faced policemen sat unmoved from the table in the corner that was covered with empty sake bottles, and a dark-skinned Kumo nin was seated on a long bench beside an overturned table, blowing to cool off his bowl of said finest rabbit soup.

Tsume wrinkled her nose. “And be up all night long because the rancid rabbit meat and the putrid cabbage gave my sons explosive diarrhea? No, thank you.” The Kumo nin froze in mid-puff, eyed his rabbit stew, and then set it on an upright table to his left with a sad sigh. It occurred to Tsume that the innkeeper had the power to toss her team to the streets for being insulted and his rabbit stew revealed, so she lightly punched the innkeeper in the shoulder, just like she jokingly punched her comrades and teammates. “Fetch me that raccoon you’ve got tucked in your kitchen along with that a bag of turnips, and I’ll make something decent.” Turnips weren’t standard fare for Konoha, but Tsume had developed a taste for them during her stay at Tetsuzanshi.

The innkeeper eyed the blond giant nervously. “Er, what raccoon?”

“The raccoon that’s only been dead this morning. The meat will still be questionable since the raccoon has been dumpster diving more than Sak… well, more than someone else I know, but at least it hasn’t spoiled yet. Nothing that a bunch of barbeque sauce won’t take care of, at least.”

The giant loomed over the Innkeeper, leaking killing spirit. “Feed us poor menus? // You should be deeply ashamed // bring us decent food!”

The innkeeper bowed and backed away slowly, apologizing profusely.

Tsume turned and tilted her head to the giant. “Inuzuka Tsume, Konoha kunoichi.”

“Killer B, Kumo shinobi.”

Whoa. Kumo had sent out the big guns, hadn’t they? Wait – that meant Tsume was going to be accompanied by their jinchuuriki, whom she had never met or even seen before. _This is soooooo cool!_ Minato had told her all about the fight he had with A and B! Tsume couldn’t wait until she was home to tell Kokoro and Sakumo all about meeting Killer B. She quickly reminded herself that she wasn’t allowed to do a happy dance in public. “These are my sons, Naruto and Kiba.” Tsume lifted a hand and pointed at each one as they were named. Killer B’s gaze lingered for a while on Naruto, as if trying to figure out where he’d seen Naruto before. It was a good thing Tsume had dyed mini-Mooncalf’s bright blond hair. “I normally don’t bring my children along, and they won’t be coming with me to Kumo – they’ll stay with the rest of my team and my ninken here, awaiting my return.”

Tsume felt Kuromaru join her side, his snout brushing the back of her leg. She tried not to show her eager excitement at meeting Killer B or his tailed demon. She wondered if the Hachibi was stronger than the Kyuubi – then Tsume decided, nah, couldn’t be. There was a whole tail difference in power, right? Eight was a smaller number than nine, and Tsume knew that larger numbers meant more, and everyone knew that more was bigger, and bigger meant stronger. (After all, Tsume told herself, the Juubi was greater in strength than any of the other tailed demons, because he had _ten_ tails.)

Tsume was feeling very proud of herself for her mathematical logic when her teammates, being much more civilized, entered the inn through the front door. Except Anko, who was no more civilized than the rest of the Inuzuka clan. Anko came through the broken window just as her sort-of aunt had. “These are my teammates, who shall stay here and await my return. Nara Shikake, Aburame Hotaru, and Mitarashi Anko.”

Killer B studied them for a moment, before his gaze returned to Naruto once more. The young girl, her face bravely set and her Kumo forehead protector tied crookedly to her forehead, glared at the Konoha nin. Then Killer B indicated the bench where the other Kumo nin. “Come, sit with us here // We have us much to discuss // Konoha ninja.”

Killer B seated himself beside the other Kumo nin, crossing his arms sternly. Tsume had expected such a large man to lumber with heavy footsteps, but he had a gliding, graceful walk that was silent, even when treading on the creaking floor. She was instantly jealous, because she made a lot of noise with her squabbling burden. She carefully untied the slings, and felt Hotaru lift it free from her shoulders. “I’ll start cooking if you want to set the boys up,” Tsume said.

“Sure.” Hotaru smiled at the boys as her kikaichu buzzed from the close contact of other humans.

Shikake sat in a chair beside the brown-skinned Kumo nin and sprawled, as if his energy just evaporated – which it probably did, Tsume considered, as she made her way into the kitchen to get cooking utensils. Anko shoved several benches and chairs in a sloppy circle so the ninjas could have a comfortable meeting space that wouldn’t be interfered by other patrons of the inn.

“Hey – hey! You can’t be in _here_!” The innkeeper shook his fist as Tsume.

“I just thought I’d grab some things…”

The innkeeper frogmarched Tsume out. “You can _ask_ , like any other paying costumer. You can’t just _barge_ in here like you _own_ the place – I don’t care _what_ sort of Hidden Village you’re from!” He glared, arms crossed, until Tsume reluctantly sat down on the only free space on the bench beside the young Kumo kunoichi.

Killer B eyed Tsume.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“Nothing to my mind // questions I’ll save to the last // after our dinner.”

Tsume had a feeling that she would have to share the raccoon and turnips with more than just her own teammates. That would be okay, she figured, since the usual way of making friends is offering good food, and she did want to come back from Kumo alive and in one good piece.

oOoOoOo

All agreed that while raccoon and turnips weren’t the standard fare, at least Tsume was a good cook, and was not likely to give those who ate her fare explosive diarrhea. “I’m surprised,” Darui said around a mouthful of mashed buttered turnips. “Usually, the other Konoha nin are lousy cooks.”

Karui glared at him as she gnawed a bone clean. Firelight glinted in her golden eyes. “That’s because the other Konoha nin are _dead_.”

Killer B set his plate to the side. “A delicious fare // fit for the greatest of kings // great simplicity.” He had stopped staring at Naruto half-way through their meal.

_What does that even mean?_ Tsume wondered as she sucked the marrow out of her collection of bones. Hotaru effortlessly ignored everyone as she concentrated on her food, her manners neat and precise as she ate her food with the ivory chopsticks that she always brought along on missions.

“Shaddup, sensei,” Karui hissed. “You’re embarrassing me!”

Tsume pried the rib bones out of Naruto and Kiba’s fists as they attempted to stab each other. Kiba pouted, and Naruto sulked without their makeshift weapons. “If you’re going to poke each other, use something decent. Food is meant to be eaten; prey can be played with.” She gave the boys chopsticks instead. The boys studied their new utensils for a moment, and then eagerly resumed poking each other.

Shikake sighed. “How’m I going to spoil them when you’re already doing it?”

“Dunno. You’ll think of something though, I’m sure of it.”

“We’ll have fun!” Anko declared with a full mouth. She tried to give Naruto a high five, but got stabbed in the palm with his chopstick. “Hey!”

“We have much to talk // to discuss important things // before we depart.”

Tsume chewed on the rib bones that she had snagged from the boys. “Sure. But can you do it in a way that I can follow?” She tapped her forehead. “It’s no secret at all that I’ve got memory and learning problems.” Tsume was going to use her simplicity to her best advantage – the more the Kumo nin believed that she wasn’t so sharp, the more they would overestimate her. People tended to be looser-lipped around those they perceived to be idiots. Luckily, Tsume thought, playing the idiot didn’t require a lot of practice or careful thinking.

(“ _No acting is ever needed when it comes so naturally to you._ ”)

Killer B studied her again, and then sighed. “Very well. I intend to leave first thing in the morning, but it’s important to know if _this_ —” he indicated the whole of Tsume “—is all that you brought along. We’re going into the higher northern altitudes, where the wind will tear your frozen flesh from your bones, where the snow is deeper than the buildings of Konoha. I want to make sure that you’re well-equipped before we leave.” He paused for a brief moment, and then flashed her a shark-toothed grin. “I promise to bring you back, but I’m sure that you’d prefer to do so with all your fingers and toes intact.”

His companions stared at Killer B with wide-eyed surprise. Tsume hoped it was due to him speaking like a normal person, and not because he promised to bring Tsume back. She noticed that he failed to mention that she would be brought back _alive_. She hoped that was just an oversight on his part. “I think I should be okay, but if I have to, I guess I can do some early morning shopping then. Do we have time?”

Without saying anything, Darui snagged a knapsack resting on the floor behind the bench he was seated upon, and tossed it to her. Tsume caught it – it was bulky and felt squishy, and smelled almost as bad as the air outside.

“We packed for you,” Killer B said.

“Yeah!” Karui hastily wiped the remnants of her buttered turnips away from her mouth. “Can’t expect you tropical wimps to dress properly for the cold!”

Tsume wasn’t repulsed by or reluctant to face the cold; she enjoyed the crisp chill of winter, and loved doing missions to the Land of Snow. Of course, the largest difference between Kumo and the Land of Snow was the altitude – Kumo was said to be nestled in the mountains at approximately 5.2 kilometers above sea level. In contrast, Konoha was about 150 meters above sea level, but at least the very flat Land of Snow (where Tsume had done a six month stint of protection detail and tutorship of the twin daughters of the Snow Daimyo’s head advisor) was about 2.5 kilometers above sea level. Surely there couldn’t be _that_ much difference in altitude, because 2.5 kilometers wasn’t a far distance to run.

Anko twitched. “Tropical wimps? After the cold snap _we_ had last week? Just who’re you calling wimps, you little shrimp?”

“Better a shrimp than a plum! Izzat your real hair?”

Anko stuck her tongue out. “At least I _have_ hair.”

Karui’s cheeks burned bright red as she hunched down, growling. She turned a scathing look on Hotaru, who was reaching for a third helping of turnips. “What are _you_ looking at, you bug-eyed freak?”

Hotaru smiled as she spooned a heaping serving onto her place. “Why, thank you. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever called me.” Her kikaichu buzzed as a few crawled from her hair line across her cheek, over the bridge of her nose, and slid into her ear. Karui’s face scrunched up in disgust.

Tsume sifted through the bag, and pulled out a fur-backed cloak that was as wide as she was tall. It smelled musty and half-rotten, and she could almost swear she saw fleas in the fur. She doubted that she’d get Hotaru to convince the fleas to go elsewhere. “Gee. You guys shouldn’t have.” She brought out a pair of fur boots that were twice as large as she needed. She sniffed, and then made a face. “Woo. Someone had _really_ bad athlete’s foot.” She pinched them between her fingers and dropped them on the floor beside Kuromaru. “You need to bury these in the deepest hole you can find.”

Killer B huffed. “Those boots belonged to the Raikage himself!”

Aside from the fact that Tsume could smell a lie, she was pretty sure that she knew what A smelled like (based on the scents of other people that Minato had been coated with as he described his fight with A and B to Tsume and Kushina), and these boots did not smell of A. “Better tell him to use foot powder then,” she said, blithely. She sensed Killer B’s killing intent boiling beneath the calm exterior, and wondered if he was trying to test her.

Tsume stuffed everything back into the knapsack. “Well, I thank you for your thoughtfulness and generosity, but I brought along clothes to keep me to warm, and I’ve got sturdy, double-insulated boots. If I need anything extra while we’re traveling, I’ll be sure to let you know. So, how long are we going to be gone?”

“Two weeks.”

Tsume and Shikake exchanged looks. Shikake leaned forward and gave Killer B a piercing look. “It was my understanding that Kumogakure was only four days’ travel from here. Why would the trip take so much longer?”

“Four days taking the main route, yes, which is difficult and dangerous for well-seasoned Kumo nin to travel during the winter, much less for inexperienced Konoha nin. High risk of avalanches, deceptive ice traps – we’ll need to take a more roundabout route. It’s longer, but safer, and we still need to travel slow so we can avoid possible elevation sickness – it’s quite common in lowlanders who aren’t acclimated. You Konoha nin are not used to the treacherous northern region, especially during the winter.”

Tsume could smell the truth of that. There was a reason that Kumo had never been successfully invaded before. They were safely tucked away among the highest peaks, with most of the known passes blocked by snow and ice during the winter, making invasions almost impossible. During the summer, Tsume imagined that the Kumo nin were so eager to get out that they mowed over anyone trying to sneak in and attack them, and just let the frequent summer thunderstorms strike down any survivors. Minato had once mentioned, somewhat facetiously at the time, that the reason that Kumo was taking advantage of the Third War to invade and take over other countries was to find a home that didn’t make Forsaken and Desolate warm and cuddly in comparison.

“Oh, and I’m afraid I must only permit that you are only minimally armed.”

Tsume was actually surprised that he was allowing her even that concession, and didn’t specify what she could or couldn’t have. She supposed that Killer B figured she would try packing along something anyway and figured it was best to permit such as long as it wasn’t enough arsenal to take out Kumo itself. Well, no matter. She had Aunt Natsumi’s ax safely tucked away in a storage scroll and a dozen kunai on hand – and multiple summons; she didn’t bring much more than that. Danzo had always taught Tsume that her greatest weapons should be her own body and mind.

Tsume stood and pulled Naruto and Kiba into her arms. “Well, then, since I’m going to be gone for so long, I’m going to go tuck my boys into bed with me, and we’ll spend the evening bonding together… just mother and sons. Good evening!”

“Tsume is a good mother,” she heard Anko snidely declare as she left the dining room for the single room that the Konoha nin would be sharing. “She’d mother anything – even little misfits or monsters like _you_.”

Karui gurgled in rage. “ _Why you_ —! I’d sooner _die_ than have anything to do with the likes of Konoha!”

“Yeah, is that so? Then why don’t you, huh?”

Tsume ducked into their room for the night just as she heard breaking wood, and figured that Shikaku and Hotaru could handle the situation. She felt Killer B’s gaze on her long after she left.

oOoOoOo

Kagami had a set schedule. Every morning after awaking at the same time, he would spend a breathless ten minutes pulling on his compression stockings. His daughter often tried to talk to him about providing assistance, but Kagami refused, stating very firmly that he was going to keep doing what he could as long as he could. ( _“The moment I stop, I lose what I have._ ”) Then he’d rest and catch his breath before taking another breathless ten minutes getting dressed. He still insisted on tying his own traditional knots, mainly to keep the dexterity in his aching fingers.

Once that was finished, he would make the short trip into his kitchen where he would already find the still-warm breakfast that Mikoto or Itachi would’ve delivered while he was getting on his compression stockings. The tea kettle would already be on the stove although the burner would be turned off, and his supplies carefully set up on a rolling cart. As much as he appreciated not having to make breakfast, Kagami considered making his own tea a sacred duty. His wife would help, if she were present, but she had taken to frequently traveling out of Konoha, hunting down obsolete oral histories to transcribe and publish. He delighted in seeing his wonderful Fumiko pursuing her passion, and encouraged her to continue it long after his earthly time had finished.

This morning was different. The kitchen was unusually chilly, which meant that breakfast would be chilly, because his back door was open. Sakumo sat in the open doorway with his back facing Kagami, looking as clean and groomed as Kagami was used to seeing. Sakumo usually only popped over after being nabbed for his monthly spit-and-shine, and often avoided the rest of the Uchiha clan. Darling Mikoto made it a point to have Sasuke toddle up to Sakumo and drop a wrapped bento into his lap, since the young children and Kagami were the only Uchiha that Sakumo allowed to approach when he was on clan grounds. From the looks of it, Sakumo had missed a bento or four.

Without saying a word, Kagami started his morning tea ritual, making sure that he had an extra cup on hand. He had to sit half-way through for a brief rest, but that was standard. Then he had to fetch his winter cloak from the closet because he wasn’t used to the cold. Once everything was prepared, he divided breakfast into two, placed everything on his rolling cart, and pushed it over to Sakumo.

There were plenty of people in Sakumo’s life to shower him with love and concern. Kagami was just satisfied to be that little oasis where Sakumo could be himself without fear, concern, or shame of how he couldn’t be the man he once was. After all, Kagami couldn’t be the man he once was, either. He hadn’t aged well or gracefully, and his heart – which Tobirama had once said was too big for Kagami’s own good sometimes – was bound to finish failing him in the next year or so.

Kagami was a man whose body was dying, and he wasn’t so sure that Sakumo’s mind or spirit weren’t doing likewise.

( _“As odd as it may seem, Danzo, Sakumo and I are kindred spirits.”_

_“I believe that, actually. If I were to be honest – and only because of generous sake you’ve shared with me – I think that’s why Sakumo has always been my favorite subordinate. And if you ever tell anyone that, I will kill you.”_

_“Ah. So, is he like your favorite the way that you were Tobirama’s favorite? Don’t glare at me. You both are rather cruel to the people you favor. It’s actually the norm to **pamper** your favorite, you clod, not sadistically torture them.”)_

Sakumo sat crosslegged, unmindful of the cold despite the thin, well-worn rags he wore. He was intently studying the shougi board sitting beside him with half the pieces replaced with white and black go stones.

“Looks like no one’s winning this one,” Kagami said as he carefully sat down on the other side of the shougi board. His edematous legs disallowed kneeling at this point in his life, even with the support stockings.

“Mmmm. No, I suppose not.” Sakumo shoved a pile of shougi pieces and white go stones over to Kagami, indicating them to be Kagami’s game pieces. He quietly accepted the tea that Kagami gave him without drinking any, and ignored the offered plate of food.

Kagami silently shrugged and scraped the contents onto his plate. No sense in wasting perfectly good food when he knew that Sakumo wouldn’t eat if he didn’t accept food the first time. “Shall we start from the beginning, or resume the current game?”

Sakumo stared at the board, bemused. Then he touched one of the go stones with the twisted, scarred fingers of his left hand. Kagami kept his gaze politely trained elsewhere. “I don’t… I don’t remember wh-where I belong.”

“No worries; I have no idea where I’m going. We can make this journey together.” Kagami carefully sorted through the stones, separating them into two piles. He gave the white stones to Sakumo, because Sakumo had always been partial to anything that was the same color as his hair. “We’ll just start from the beginning. There’s never anything wrong with a fresh start.”

Sakumo rubbed the surface of the go stone before he set it down on the board. “It’s cold,” he whispered. He stuffed his twisted fingers in his mouth, almost as if suckling them, and whimpered.

“It would have to be, my friend, just to make it snow.” Kagami was always careful to keep his part of the conversation limited to the weather and whatever kind of strange game that Sakumo had brought around. Sakumo sometimes brought board games, other times card games, and once a Monopoly game that used Yahtzee score cards and die instead of bank money. Kagami didn’t know if Sakumo just brought along whatever he scavenged from the dumpsters, or if it was an oddly-coded message that only Sakumo, in his twisted paranoia and shattered mind, could understand. Kagami always tried to reason through and guess the odd rules that Sakumo was never able to explain, and often it seemed like Sakumo was trying to pass him a warped and cryptic message. Of course, as a shinobi, _everything_ was a warped and cryptic message trying to be passed on. 

Sakumo dropped his hand from his mouth. “My move?” he asked. He snagged a black go stone from Kagami’s pile, a shougi piece from his own pile – a knight – and stacked them together in the left corner. After a moment, he shook his head and pushed them to the opposite side of the board. “They belong there.”

“It’s a powerful combination.” Kagami had a lifetime of keeping his voice neutral in even the oddest of situations. Natsumi and Tobirama had given him many opportunities to practice a blasé attitude, after all.

“The go stone can go anywhere,” Sakumo explained as he ducked his head. He peeked shyly at Kagami, before he busied himself with timidly sorting his shougi and go pieces into separate piles. His cheeks burned red with embarrassment. “It’s not limited by rules, movements, or expect-expect-expectations. It’s simple, and that’s okay.”

Kagami had a feeling that Sakumo wasn’t talking about an actual go stone. “Naturally. Life needs simple things.”

“S-simple people.” Sakumo rolled a go stone in his hand before he held it out to Kagami. There was a significant chip in the stone, an obvious flaw in its smooth structure. The edges of the chip were rough and uneven. “This is my favorite.” Sakumo’s voice took on a desperate edge as he hunched his shoulders. “That’s… that’s okay, right?”

After a (delayed) heartbeat, Kagami folded Sakumo’s fingers so the stone was enclosed safely within the palm of his hand. “It’s all right to loved flawed objects. Perfection isn’t worthy of love, because perfection doesn’t need love.” Kagami shaped his message, hoping that Sakumo would hear the warped, cryptic message. “Even broken things have a place and purpose in life, so cherish this lovely little flawed stone. After all, perfect go stones can be found anywhere. This? You’ll never find another like it.”

Sakumo’s smile was bright even as his eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I know. I know.”

oOoOoOo

Shikake gently shook Tsume awake. She yawned, snuggled down against the two boys sleeping curled up in her arms, and then groaned. The air seemed cold against her face, and she heard the whistling of wind outside the window. With the smell of snow following closely behind, Tsume knew she was going to be heading out into a brewing winter storm.

At least the snow smelled infinitely better than the village. Tsume rolled upright, to her feet and out of bed, without disturbing her two sons. She bent backwards slightly, arching her spine, and felt the pulling stretch in her spine. “Two weeks, huh?” she asked, rolling her head. Her neck popped a few times.

Shikake stuffed his hands in his pockets. “We’ll wait two weeks, unless Hotaru’s kikaichu report something happened. If they don’t report anything at the end of two weeks, I’ll leave Hotaru here to wait for you.” It was technically not allowed to leave a single nin behind when it wasn’t a solo or seductive mission, unless that nin was an Inuzuka (because she always had her ninken companion) or an Aburame, who was a colony in and of themselves.

“Right.” Tsume yanked back Anko’s covers, and then gently placed the boys on either side. Anko cracked her eyes open, murmured _good luck_ , shifted around until the well-worn stuffed rabbit that-was-so-totally- _not_ -Mister-Nap-chan was firmly tucked under her chin, and then pulled her blanket up around the two fuzzy heads. Then she squeaked when two little toads crawled out of the boys’ pajamas and hopped up so they were perfectly balanced on her modest chest.

In the shadow of the room where she had been keeping watch, Hotaru waved her hand. Three more kikaichu buzzed across the room to hide in Tsume’s hair. Tsume wondered if she was beginning to cultivate her own colony. “I’ll keep them fed,” she promised.

“I know. My kikaichu think you’re the best to travel with, since they never go hungry.”

Tsume didn’t think that any ally or resident of Konoha should go hungry, even if it meant that the kikaichu had to bite to draw blood for access to her chakra. The plus side of feeding the kikaichu was that her chakra rendered them undetectable to sensors, since the kikaichu would read as identical to her. Tsume turned to Shikake and engulfed him in a tight hug. They hadn’t had the opportunity to speak privately during the trip, but it was a rare treat to spend so much time just being in the presence of her sire.

“Remember what the Hokage told you,” Shikake whispered in her ear.

Since those in hearing already knew and Hotaru had already ensured that no one was eavesdropping, Tsume repeated that Danzo had forced her to memorize word-for-word before he let her leave Konoha. “‘Deliver the cargo safely. Do not deviate from our agreed parameters. Do not start an international incident. And for the love of all dead Hokages, _do not_ _seduce the Raikage_.’” Personally, Tsume felt that last was a little overkill, because she had absolutely no intention of using her seal anywhere in Lightning.

“Good girl.” Shikake patted the small of Tsume’s back, and then reached up to brush a few wild locks of hair from her forehead so he could press his chapped lips against it. “Jiraiya will be in later today and will tighten the security around your sons. If anything happens to the rest of us, he’ll get them safely to Konoha.”

“I know.” It had been risky to bring Naruto and Kiba along on this mission, but Tsume was grateful that Jiraiya had been able to tweak Naruto’s seal. She hadn’t been able to smell the Kyuubi singularly ever since, which meant that the seal was working properly – she had never smelled the Kyuubi on Kushina, even with her strongest olfaction. “I’ll try to be good.”

“And if you can’t?”

“I won’t get caught.”

“And if you do?” Hotaru asked from her corner.

Tsume grinned and wagged her fingers at Hotaru. “I won’t leave any witnesses!”

Tsume secured Mooncalf’s forehead protector to her upper left arm, and then quickly put on her customary face paints with the aid a small hand mirror and what little light from the street lamps successfully filtered through the filthy windows. After grabbing her pack, which Tsume had double-checked and repacked last night, Tsume kissed Kuromaru on the top of his head, and then left the small inn room they all shared. The stairs creaked beneath her weight as she made her way down to the common area, where the Kumo nin sat waiting for her beside the fireplace. Killer B was squatting instead of sitting, and he didn’t look up as he fed the fire another scoop of coal.

Karui gave Tsume a scathing glare. “Is that _all_ you’re going to wear?” she asked snidely, crossing her arms in front of herself and puffing up tall.

Tsume looked down, pleased for once than someone was shorter than she was. She resisted the urge to affectionately ruffle that sad, sorry thin hair. “Inuzuka women have been running around in the wilderness half-naked on for centuries. I’m sure I’ll be fine with the layers I’ve got on.” Aunt Natsumi had personally taught Tsume the jutsu on how to circulate her chakra for more body warmth, so Tsume figured that she’d get through this without any frostbite.

Darui eyed Tsume. “The Inuzuka are native to Fire Country.”

Semantics. Fire Country could get cold too, and it wasn’t like their hunting grounds didn’t take her ancestors across the borders whenever they got bored with the local produce, prey, or men. “I’ll be fine. I hereby absolve you Kumo nin from providing me clothes.” Especially with how badly the offered clothes had smelled last night.

Killer B remained where he was, staring the fire. “Why do you have kikaichu on you?” His voice was like a rumbling earthquake. “The Raikage explicitly said no nin with bloodline limits.”

Uh oh. Tsume hoped that Killer B was just making a wild guess, but it would probably still be a bad thing to lie. “I _don’t_ have a bloodline limit. The kikaichu are just there as an extra precaution. They’ll bring back word to Konoha if Kumo decides to hell with it, and offs me even though I’ll be on my very best behavior. Besides, no matter what the Aburame feel, the kikaichu aren’t _real_ nin, like my dogs. We wouldn’t be able to make forehead protectors small enough for them, anyway.”

Killer B threw his head back and laughed. “Fair enough.”

“But, sensei…!”

“She’s still within the specified parameters,” Killer B said as he straightened from his crouch, towering above everyone. He grinned and ruffled Karui’s hair. “It’s my brother’s own damned fault if he didn’t say that the Konoha nin couldn’t bring along any riders.”

“Then why doesn’t she bring her dog?” Karui demanded.

Kuromaru was a Konoha shinobi, sworn and true, but Tsume wasn’t going to elaborate that to any hotheaded youngster. It wasn’t her place to educate foreign non-allied shinobi, and it _really_ wasn’t her place to be giving out information, even if it wasn’t restricted Intel. “He’s going to stay and watch my sons – they’re part of the Pack, too. Can we go now? The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get back.”

Karui jumped to her feet and stomped past Tsume, deliberately bumping Tsume hard with a pointy shoulder. “What kind of mother would bring along her crotch droppings to an enemy country?” Karui demanded, not quite under her breath, but certainly meant to be heard. Tsume mentally shrugged that off as Darui brushed past her with more finesse. Killer B gestured to the door that Karui slammed through.

“After you, Inuzuka-san.”

Tsume turned her back on him just as his killing spirit began to deliberately leak. “Thanks.” She felt a delightful thrill race up and down her spine at the idea of having the Hachibi’s jinchuuriki at her back, and refrained from giggling with excitement. _So cool!_ She bet that Naruto would grow up to be even cooler though, and he wouldn’t need any stupid sunglasses to do it.

Naruto also wouldn’t have that silly daydreaming look that earned Minato his nickname as Mooncalf. Instead, Naruto would look like Kushina did – gentle, or sly, depending on her mood. Although Tsume supposed it wouldn’t be so bad if Naruto had Minato’s soft smile, the one that was so warm and unassuming, that made Tsume feel like someone just liked her for who she was, and didn’t care if she was stupid or forgetful or reckless.

And Kiba would grow up with Naruto, so it would be just like having a miniature, male-version of Tsume hanging out with a miniature male-version of Kushina. Gosh, it wasn’t _wrong_ to want to live vicariously through one’s children, right?

“Are you daydreaming?” Karui demanded suspiciously as Tsume absently followed after her new companions.

“Nope.” Tsume wished she could daydream, but the streets were already becoming crowded with the early morning shift leaving for the factories, the merchants preparing to load up their goods for an early leave from town, the last little bit of last night’s drunken revelries finally picking themselves out of the filthy gutters, patrolling nin and police teams, and the occasional cutthroat and small-time criminal taking advantage of the most vulnerable in the crowds. It was substantially less crowded than last night, but still more people than Tsume was used to seeing bunched together outside of festivals or Market Day in Konoha. It also meant that she still had to guard her purse (alas, still quite empty) if she wanted to keep it.

Tsume then realized that she hadn’t seen any prostitutes working the street last night, or even right now. “Is there a red light district around here?” she asked Killer B. He had taken the lead, moving through the crowd with a lethal grace that made oncoming foot traffic immediately part to make room.

“Why? Looking to get laid?” Karui asked snidely. Karui had fallen back to follow Tsume at an uncomfortably close distance. It would make slipping a kunai through Tsume’s ribs alarmingly easy, and it didn’t help that Karui stank of malicious violence just waiting to happen.

Tsume was saved from having to answer because Darui spoke. “She’s does traditional kunoichi work, Karui. Something you’ll manage to avoid because of your apprenticeship with Killer B – getting laid probably isn’t going to be high on her priorities.”

“Traditional…? Oh. Wanted to scope out the competition, did ya?”

Actually, Tsume did make it a habit to sneak some spare change into the pocket of the whore who smelled the most destitute – it was a good way to get reliable gossip on the down and low when doing a seduction mission. “Sure. Never know when you might have to horn in on someone else’s territory. There’s a certain list of ethics and rules that’s gotta be followed, you know?” Tsume mulled a bit, trying to remember some of what Kokoro used to ramble on about. “Like whether the party of the first part is agreeable to shared boundaries with the party of the second part, in which the consumers for the goods of the first part and second part stay within the confines of the agreement, as defined by…”

By the time they were outside the village and cresting on a faraway slope that overlooked the valley, Tsume was still rambling, and the eyes of Darui and Karui had glazed over from mind-numbing boredom. Tsume couldn’t tell what was going on behind Killer B’s sunglasses.

“…and then after the party of the first has declared its intent against the parties of the fourth and seventh, then the party of the second may declare a limited amount of territory—”

“AAARGH!” Karui slapped her hands over her ears, leaped past Tsume with chakra-enhanced feet that left ankle-deep footprints in the frozen ground, and planted herself in front of Killer B, forcing the party to stop moving lest she be run over. “Sensei! Make her stop!”

Killer B was rocking his head as if to music only he could hear. He went still, and then removed some stuffing from his ears. “You say something, my dear apprentice?”

Karui whimpered and leaned against him, her forehead pressed against his abdomen. “So mean, sensei.”

Tsume tried not to look too smug. Kokoro once managed to convince some Kiri nin that they couldn’t abduct or kill Team Sakumo because they hadn’t submitted the proper paperwork in triplicate in order to obtain the correct authorization, as based on a treaty signed between their two villages after the Second Shinobi War.

A week later, the Hokage had to ask Sakumo very seriously why he had just received a formal request in triplicate from Kiri formally requesting permission to kill the girls. Having denied the permission Tsume was pretty sure such was why Kiri still had a small bounty for her to be taken alive.

Kokoro later turned her ability to ramble on and bore her listeners into tears as an effective way to break people in T&I who otherwise managed to withstand physical torture. And if the boredom was ineffective against breaking people, Danzo just unleashed Tsume and her seal. After all, ninja were trained to deal with pain and discomfort – unbridled lust, on the other hand, was something no one remembered to shore up their defenses.

“Ah, my cute little pupil. You mustn’t antagonize our guest. You have been too long kept behind the walls of our great village – my fault, I promise to sneak us out more often for adventures – and Inuzuka-san is surely a well-traveled woman experienced in the ways of the world. Besides, this mission dictates that Inuzuka-san is our ally.”

With a hum indicating that he had spoken his say, Killer B replaced the stuffing in his ears, and resumed the upward trek. A brisk wind slapped them in the face, bringing along a few flurries that followed ahead of the storm. Dark gray clouds boiled overhead, stacking tall until light was blotted out over the mountains, like they had been dipped in ink. Once they cleared the crest, Killer B turned to Tsume. He kept the stuffing in place. “We shall be going straight through the storm, but I’ll stop when it gets to be too much for you and you require shelter.”

Tsume pushed down her irritation. She had run through plenty of storms. Like, uh… Well, she had! She just couldn’t remember if those storms had snow – although she vaguely recalled Danzo smearing her with rabbit fat because of course he would run them through a vicious snow storm. What was the rabbit fat for, again? This one looked really nasty, though. “Let’s get it on,” she said with an impatient flap of her hand. The flap turned into twist as she turned her focus internally for a brief moment. She felt her chakra flare briefly, which made the others look at her warily. There was a pulling sensation which was quickly followed by a steady rush of warmth. “There. All set to go – I’ll be plenty warm.”

Killer B said nothing as he turned back to their destination, but Darui’s voice was dark with warning as he said, “You’ll need it.”

oOoOoOo

Day One from Shikotan, Tsume learned that Lightning received hail up to the size of plums.

“This is pretty mild,” Karui said, pressing close to Killer B. “You should see the thunderstorms we get in the summer, especially with all the hail _they_ bring.” They were currently all crowded very closely in the small underground hole that Tsume made, because she refused to continue walking through a blizzard where the wind blew so strong that she had to use chakra just to stick to the surface without getting swept away. (She already left claw marks on an exposed boulder when the first gust of wind almost blasted her down the mountainside). The Kumo nin insisted on joining her, saying they had to keep her in their line of vision at all times until she returned to her Konoha teammates. Tsume was reconsidering her ability to make cozy holes with her jutsu. _More is more_ , she decided for next time.

“Indeed.” Killer B nodded his head. He had lapsed twice into haiku during their so-far short journey, until Tsume clutched her head and complained about how insensible he was. At least his sulk ended when the storm hit with all the enraged fury of a spurned lover. “It’s a common training method to stand outside naked in a storm where the hail is a minimum of eight centimeters in circumference to see how long one can endure.”

Tsume couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not when his scent remained unchanged. She also had no idea how large a circumference of eight centimeters was. Sounded pretty small, though. Centimeters weren’t very large, after all.

“My record is forty-two seconds,” Darui said.

“Four and a half minutes,” Killer B declared proudly. “And it would’ve been longer too, if the storm hadn’t ended just there.” Yeah, if Tsume was a hail storm, she’d definitely move on, too.

Karui hunched behind her raised knees. “I did just fine,” she muttered against her kneecaps.

“Fourteen seconds,” Darui supplied to Tsume.

Karui glared at her loudmouthed companion as her scent burned with humiliation.

Personally, Tsume felt that meant that Karui was a full twenty-eight seconds smarter than Darui, and, uh… a lot of seconds smarter than Killer B. 

“So...” Darui leaned his arm against his knee and studied Tsume. “What do Konoha nin do for fun? We told you ours, you have to tell us yours.”

Gosh. Tsume wracked her brain to remember something that wasn’t exactly confidential. Well, she still didn’t believe the whole bit of standing outside in hailstorms, so what would be a suitable equivalent for Konoha? They had the whole Will of Fire going, so it probably should have something to do with flames… “We like to set our hair on fire and see how long it burns before the person gives in and dunks their head in a bucket of water.” She tugged at her hair. “I haven’t done it for a while, though.”

Karui flushed bright red as Killer B peered over the rim of his sunglasses and gave Tsume a reprimanding look.

“I hate Konoha nin!” Karui cried, smacking her hand against Killer B’s shoulder. Embarrassment gave way to anger. “I hate them for killing my father, and I hate that we have to be nice to her and let her live!”

“Perhaps,” Darui whispered to Tsume, “it’s best that we don’t mention anything about burnt hair.”

oOoOoOo

Day Two from Shikotan, Tsume learned that nose hairs freeze. It was exceedingly uncomfortable, especially because she kept stuffing a finger into a nostril to check, once again, for any possible frozen boogers. She didn’t have any, and Karui called her an uncivilized animal. Tsume spent a few hours silently entertaining herself by figuring out just what sort of animal she would be, if she wasn’t like a dog. Then she tried to figure out what would count as a civilized animal – most likely, a cat, she decided. Especially an Uchiha cat. And maybe a goose, who were very noble, dignified creatures, until you pissed them off. It took her mind off the fact that the air was more thin than she was used to, and breathing was a chore.

The process of thinking left Tsume with the realization that being an uncivilized animal was probably why Hyuuga Hiashi never really liked her – well, aside from the whole embarrassing “I’ll scratch your itch if you scratch mine” when Tsume was a hormonal sixteen year old. That fiasco ended when Hiashi immediately fell asleep on her after she sucked him off. Since Tsume didn’t get any itch scratched in return with Hiashi being virtually unconscious, she taped a note to his forehead about how Uchiha Fugaku was _soooo_ much better in bed than Hiashi ever was, and proceeded to let the world know all about his pathetic two minutes of stamina.

Danzo had been very displeased about the whole process – something about her feeding into an ancient grudge between rival clans and inciting further resentment for generations to come.

Tsume mentally gave Hyuuga Hizashi an apology for her past appalling behavior. She figured she owed him that much, since he had bravely sacrificed his own life to preserve Konoha’s peace.

oOoOoOo

Day Three from Shikotan, Tsume learned that Killer B’s rap was much better than his haiku. She then decided that the sunglasses weren’t _that_ bad. She was also getting used to his quirky speech, the looks he’d rake her with that made her insides tingle with possibilities, and his scents. Unfortunately, Killer B’s companions disliked the rap more than they did the haiku, so Killer B resumed speaking like a normal person.

Tsume was fascinated when she figured that somehow the Hachibi had managed to enmesh itself with Killer B. The Kyuubi had simply overpowered Naruto, but Killer B seemed to be in full function, perhaps in unity. She thought she wasn’t that obvious with her sniffing, until Karui snidely told her that yes, Kumo nin did bathe, and there was no possible way she could say that the Kumo nin smelled worse than Konoha nin.

“After all,” Karui added, “ _we_ don’t go around bathing in the blood of our enemies.” 

Tsume was offended. “We don’t bathe in the blood of our enemies either!” Doing so would be a stinky mess, and Konoha nin were polite enough to keep their scents from being overwhelming around the Inuzuka clan.

“Yeah?” Karui poked Tsume in the chest, her entire body language as challenging as her scent was belligerent. “And what about the rumors of you guys drinking the blood of your enemies?”

Tsume dismissively waved her hand. “Oh. That was Uchiha Madara, and only because Grandmother Shinzou pushed him into accepting the challenge anyway. Grandmother just had that special touch, you know? Anyway, Konoha really don’t like to really brag about Madara.” Especially when the asshole went around shredding the brains of innocent little six year olds and kidnapping random four year olds for Kiri’s Academy.

Killer B and his companions were always careful not to imply that he was a jinchuuriki. Tsume could respect that, and feigned ignorance the best she could when she felt it was appropriate.

oOoOoOo

Day Four the first half from Shikotan, Tsume learned that avalanches really could be started by little things, although Karui vehemently (and very quietly) read Tsume the riot act anyway. Honestly, Tsume hadn’t meant to sneeze, and no matter what anyone thinks, shoving a finger under one’s nose doesn’t really stop a sneeze.

“You are all very impressive jumpers,” Tsume told her companions, trying to be as complimentary as possible without being suspicious. She really did admire their ability to jump. Killer B had picked Tsume right up and they leapt over the sliding avalanche, avoiding a horrible fate of being swept over the edge of the ravine they were following, or being smothered.

Killer B was also as hard as a rock, which made Tsume’s personal interest perk up with more force than she was used to. Sex wasn’t hard to come by, and she enjoyed it – even on the job – but men like Killer B weren’t often on her list to seduce. She liked men with lots of muscle, and Killer B had enough solid mass to be two or three other men.

Killer B instantly struck a pose at Tsume’s compliment, flexing his muscles beneath his heavy winter coat. “Kumo nin are faster than a bolt of lightning!” He flowed smoothly into another pose, just as Darui covered his eyes in exasperation. “Kumo nin are more powerful than an avalanche!” He struck another pose as Karui’s face turned bright red and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “Kumo nin can leap a tall mountain in a single bound!”

Tsume clapped as she soaked in Killer B’s cheerful amusement. “Kumo nin are awesome!”

“ _No seduction allowed!”_ a miniature Danzo declared, popping up on her shoulder.

Tsume’s hormones drop-kicked miniature-Danzo off her shoulder. _“You said I couldn’t seduce the Raikage,_ ” her hormones replied. _“You said nothing about the Raikage’s brother. You should’ve been more specific about these things._ ” Besides, it wasn’t technically seduction if she didn’t use her seal, right?

oOoOoOo

Day Four the last half from Shikotan, Tsume came to the sad realization that she was never going to be able to lure Killer B into her bed with Karui hanging around like a very loud, little leech. Despite herself and her best judgment (which Tsume knew could be pretty lousy at times), Tsume found herself growing rather fond of Karui. Karui was loud, defensive, bitter, and hostile, and reminded Tsume of a red-haired Anko when she first took the reluctant, belligerent Anko under her wing.

Tsume knew she shouldn’t get attached to reluctant-allies-usually-enemies people (possible one-night stands like Killer B totally didn’t count), but she still found something enduring about Karui, even if she had tried haphazardly to kill Tsume in her sleep, trip Tsume off a cliff, and poison her food – although that last was, according to Killer B and Darui, “spices”. Tsume advised Karui to try a poison that tasted a lot better than whatever the hell she dumped in Tsume’s bowl of stew. Even though Karui was only slightly younger than Anko, she had the maturity of an eleven year old, uh, hmmm, who did she know to be that immature? Well, Anko had been pretty immature, and hurting really badly after what Orochimaru had done, so she’d just stick with that comparison.

Okay, so Karui had the maturity of an eleven year old newly curse-sealed Anko. Tsume couldn’t tell if the immaturity was being aggravated by Karui’s resentment towards Konoha for the apparent slaying of her father before Karui was even born, or if Karui just never got out of Kumo much to experience the world. Nonetheless, there was something fragile about Karui’s rage, as if she used it to shore up a wall against the real world. Somewhere deep inside (really, _really_ deep inside) was a lonely little girl.

Tsume remembered all too well what it was like to be a lonely little girl.

oOoOoOo

Day Five from Shikotan was a very busy day. Tsume leaped into a ravine over twenty-five hundred meters deep to save Karui’s life, broke every single bone in her right hand and arm (again), and accidentally used her siren seal on Killer B.

Well, no one ever accused Tsume of half-assing anything. And if they did, Tsume would’ve just said that her ass was large enough that even a half-assed attempt was still pretty darn good.


	32. Delta Years - Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Okay, so, like Tsume, I dislike numbers. trying to figure out how fast the average human body falls was an exercise in frustration. I finally made my husband calculate this out. That being said, it's still not quite right, maybe, but hey, at least my math wasn't as bad the four minutes it takes for a planet to blow in DBZ.
> 
> \- My father broke every bone in his hand, twice. He didn't realize that he did so the first time ("Well, I just knew that my hand hurt for a long time after your uncle accidentally smashed it with a mallet,"), until he had to get his hand x-rayed after a horse stomped on it after throwing my dad. Therefore, I dedicate this chapter to him! (I'm not sure he would consider this the dubious honor that it is.)

Her temporary teammates told her it would be the highest point of their journey, and that it wasn’t uncommon for the path to be shrouded by the cloudbanks. Tsume had never been up so high before to learn, first hand, what the inside of a cloud was like. She found it uncomfortably damp, exceedingly chilly, and muffled in scent and sound. They followed a small path that had been carved through the shale, with thick ropes secured to spikes deeply imbedded in the side of the mountain for travelers to hold on to, especially if footing was slick from ice or snow, or the wind was strong.

“This,” Killer B waved his hand to indicate the white space of air just beyond where the mountain sheered away into a steep cliff, “is actually part of the Great Gorge. It’s more than two and a half kilometers deep. Don’t fall off. There’s a river at the bottom, but its levels would be low this time of year, so you’ll splatter all over the rocks if you accidentally fall off and when you inevitably hit the ground.”

“Not that you would survive hitting the water from this height anyway,” Darui added.

Killer B continued on, blithely. “Legend has it that the Great Gorge was created during the fight between the Sage of Six Paths and the Juubi – eventually, the Sage managed to stun the Juubi enough to subdue and seal it within himself.”

Tsume tried to imagine a cliff more than twenty-five hundred meters deep. Her brain couldn’t comprehend that much distance in a horizontal line, much less a vertical line. The number was simply too big.

“Be grateful it isn’t windy,” Karui said from behind Tsume. Karui stank of nervous fear and stale sweat. The stench worsened every time she glanced towards the white expanse, and her grip on the rope was white-knuckled. She hadn’t been like this before when they stood on the precipice of other ravines and cliffs. Tsume didn’t know if the fear was from not being able to see all the way down, or because the view would otherwise be much more overwhelming than the other ravines and cliffs. “It can be so ferocious at times that you’d get blown off no matter how hard you tried to stick with chakra.” Her grip tightened even more as her words trailed off.

“The shale would break anyway from the applied force of chakra,” Darui put in. He was at the front of the team. Despite being close, his voice was muffled and his body was partially obscured by the thick clouds. “This way isn’t usually traveled during the winter, but the other option would increase the length of your trip another two days.”

“The sight is breathtaking in the summer,” Killer B said. He sounded wistful.

“Sure, _if_ there aren’t any clouds hanging around,” Karui added, barely able to disguise the whimper that followed when a gust of wind shook them.

Tsume felt oddly closed in as they walked the path. It was too treacherous to run, so their pace was slow and careful. Frost covered her fur-lined hood, and she felt ice crystals forming on her eyelashes. This high up, it was difficult to breath, and she often found herself dizzy and gasping for air like a fish out of water. Scents were as muffled as sound, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes were watching. The surroundings cloudbank reminded her too much of Kiri nin and their assassination techniques. If Tsume was going to ambush anyone, this would be the perfect place and time for it. And while she knew she shouldn’t _really_ trust these Kumo nin any more than she could dropkick them off the side of the mountain, Tsume knew that the devil she was with was much more preferable to the devil she smelled lurking in the clouds.

With each careful step, Tsume slowly increased her olfaction sensitivity. At thirty percent, she quickened her pace, hand over hand with the rope, until she was just behind Killer B. His back was tense but he didn’t change his pace or turn towards her when Tsume pressed the flat of her hand against the small of his back and increased her hearing. “We’re not alone,” she whispered.

“I know.” Killer B didn’t sound concerned. Even with the increased chakra in her ears, she couldn’t hear much more than she already had before.

Tsume dropped her hand. The trail was barely a meter wide from the side of the cliff that towered above them, to the edge that dropped off abruptly into the vast white nothingness. “There’s eighteen of them and only four of us. They’re flying just above. I can smell the feathers of their wings, and they’re preparing to attack.”

Killer B’s foot faltered briefly, and his scent flared with surprise.

Tsume didn’t know if Killer B’s surprise was due to how he hadn’t known the exact numbers, or because of the other details she provided. For the good of Konoha, Tsume knew she couldn’t reveal the extent of her abilities, but she had to be able to do _something_ given her reputation as an Inuzuka tracker. It was always hard to remember where that fine line between what was expected as an exceptional tracker, and what was amazingly impossible. “They smell malicious.” They weren’t yet moving in for the attack, but Tsume could sense it about to happen – like tilting the head back to see the entire length of the tidal wave just about to crash down.

Darui had fallen back as soon as Tsume began talking. “Killer B – this is the worst place to get into a fight.”

“Indeed.” Killer B stepped sideways, closer to the downward edge, and gestured at Karui. The edge crumbled slightly beneath his feet, causing shards of shale to break loose. “Get ahead of me,” he ordered firmly. Karui squeezed past Tsume and slid under Killer B’s thick arm. Tsume could hear Karui’s pounding heart. “You, as well. This wouldn’t be your fight, Konoha kunoichi. The less you’re involved, the more we can assure your safety and our treaty.”

Tsume ducked under the arm. She was wider than Karui, and she had to squeeze sideways past Killer B. The edge of the trail crumbled away from his feet again and fell downward through the white expanse.

“Keep moving ahead,” he told Darui. “I’m going to fall back and deal with them.”

“You sure?”

“It’s the Yozora clan.” At the mention of who was lurking in the clouds, Darui’s adrenaline spiked, and Karui’s pores flooded with fresh fear. “I’m quite sure. Go, now.”

Killer B pressed his back flat against the cliff, looping one hand around the rope as he withdrew his sword from its scabbard; the scraping metallic sound was almost nonexistent in the clouds. Darui urged Tsume and Karui forward. 

A trembling seized Karui’s arms, and her feet stumbled as she struggled to keep up with Darui’s greater speed. Tsume turned her head as she smelled a spark of fire chakra, and jumped forward, forcing Karui’s head down. “Duck!” Tsume shielded Karui as the blast tags exploded behind her. She felt the singe of heat and the pelting thuds as exploded shale struck her knapsack. Killer B’s chakra flared, searing hot in its strength. Tsume twisted around to look over her shoulder and only saw a swarm of shadows. One of the shadows shot upwards with the sound of splintering bones. She smelled blood, rage, and delight.

“Hurry!” Darui’s voice was a hiss that carried low and far. She reluctantly turned away from where Killer B was fighting, wishing that the clouds wouldn’t obstruct her view of what was going on. _The one time I get to see Killer B fight without it being against Konoha, and I don’t get to see a thing!_

“Come on, Karui.” Tsume pushed gently against Karui’s back. Karui shrieked and curled into a ball.

“I can’t!” Karui’s hands trembled so hard that they were clenched around the rope. “I can’t m-move!”

Okay, now was a really bad time for people to have a bad case of nerves. Tsume gritted her teeth, and tried to pry Karui’s hands loose. “Let me help you, then.”

Karui shrieked as anger momentarily overlapped fear. “D-don’t touch me!”

“Then move!” Tsume pushed away from Karui and whirled around, rocking upright. She brought a kunai up in time to block the downward blow from a wickedly-curved scimitar. Metal clanged and her entire arm ached from the vibrations, as she caught the brief appearance of a long, narrow face and eyes that were a solid brown – no white sclera, no black pupil. Then a gigantic flap of the wings – covered in dark brown and tan-flecked feathers – allowed the shinobi to abruptly reverse in midair and disappear into the cloudbank.

The ground shook with a gigantic crash, which was almost immediately followed by a deafening roar and a wave of fiery chakra that made the hair on the back of Tsume’s arms stand on end. The edge of the trail crumbled away as Tsume grasped the rope. She pulled her dangling legs back beneath her, and yanked her hood down so her peripheral vision wasn’t obstructed. The frigid air struck her like a slap to the ears. She turned back to Karui.

Karui had managed to stand half-way, but she was sobbing quietly, hands still tightly clenching the rope. Darui stood across from her – the trail between them had broken away, leaving a large sheered gap between. “You can do it,” Darui urged quietly, beckoning with one hand as he kept the other hand firmly clamped on the rope; the imbedded spikes were still intact, and the rope dangled in the open space. “Just like you practiced at home. I’ll be here to catch you, Karui - I won’t let you slip like last time.”

Karui’s legs collapsed beneath her. Crying, she pressed her face against one shoulder. “I c-can’t! I _can’t_!”

Tsume wondered how much trouble she’d be in if she just picked Karui up by the scruff of her neck and tossed her to Darui. Some judiciously applied chakra would get Karui over the gap easily enough.

There was no time to follow up on this idea – Tsume blocked another vicious aerial attack, and then kicked the attacking shinobi in the stomach before he could backpedal. The force of her chakra-enhanced kick sent the shinobi away in an uncontrolled arc, crashing into another diving shinobi. Two blocks with her kunai, and her arm was starting to ache severely. The attackers had the advantage, using a combination of strength and gravity against her. The clouds on the opposite side of Tsume boiled angrily as a storm of tailed-demon chakra was unleashed. Tsume ducked another attack, sliding beneath the scimitar blade so she could swipe at the attacker’s belly. The shinobi barrel-rolled in midair from her kunai, receiving nothing more than a shallow scratch.

“Damn it!” she yelled as the shinobi disappeared once more. “Hold still so I can kill you already!” A piece of shale struck the top of her head. She thrust the kunai upward as she dropped down, and felt the blade sink into soft flesh before striking hard bone. Blood showered as a dead body collapsed on her. The wings were heavier than expected, and the feathers tasted like what an eagle smelled as Tsume struggled to throw the body off and accidentally got as mouthful of feathers at the same time. The body slid half-way off before it somehow got caught on the buckles of her knapsack.

Karui shrieked as another attacker grabbed and pulled her off the trail, dangling her in the air. Darui threw a kunai, but the attacker easily dodged. Karui clawed the arms that held her and then bit an exposed wrist. The shinobi backhanded Karui with his other hand.

A gigantic _thing_ shot out of the dark and slammed into the shinobi. Obscured by the clouds and vision still partially obstructed by feathers, the object looked like an octopus’s limb, except it was wrapped with Hachibi’s chakra, glowing and crackling like lightning chakra. The flying shinobi couldn’t block the limb as he was struck, and Karui fell from his grasp. Karui didn’t even scream as the clouds swallowed her, but Darui did, even as he wrestled with his own attacker.

“KARUI! B! KARUI IS OVER THE EDGE!”

The octopus limb immediately dipped downward, disappearing through the clouds, pawing and searching. Killer B roared with frustration and fear, and the mountain shook once more.

Tsume slipped out of her knapsack and shrugged the dead body off. “I’ll get Karui!” she yelled, and ran down off the cliff just as another attacker flew in and started hacking at the octopus limb. Her hair brushed close and she felt the spikiest ends sizzle and melt when it came into contact with the Hachibi’s chakra. “Hey – get out of my way!” The limb adjusted slightly, moving out of reach.

It was a weird sensation, shunshinning downward and forcing herself to drop faster than freefall via gravity. If she held her face just right, she couldn’t draw in any air, so she tried to keep her face angled low. Colors darted in her vision as shattered shale flew from beneath her feet – it was hard to judge through the thick soles of her boots exactly what she needed to stick to the fragile surface. It was difficult to concentrate – too much chakra would propel her off the side, and she was still trying to pay attention to what her nose was able to tell her when she remembered that breathing through her mouth didn’t do much for olfaction.

Tsume tried to figure how fast it would take to reach the bottom of a twenty-five hundred meter ravine, wondered if she could catch Karui before that could happen. Oh gosh – this was the worst time ever to have the world’s worst math skills!

She pushed more chakra into her nose and took a deep breath in through her nose before panting desperately like a dog in heat – Karui smelled of shock and fear. The attackers – fourteen still alive – mostly concentrated on swarming Killer B and Darui. Karui had been dropped at least three meters away from the cliff’s side. Unless it slanted outward somehow, Tsume could be right beside Karui and still not reach her. Actually, it felt like the cliff was slanting inward.

The clouds remained unbroken. The cold air stung her throat. Her ears also felt cold, and the blood was starting to freeze in her hair.

She saw a dark blot in the clouds just below her – could smell Karui so close that she could maybe touch her, but she knew that she still wouldn’t be able to reach. Tsume stretched her hand out as Karui’s obscured form entered her vision. “Can you grab hold?” she yelled. Karui’s body was limp, and her open eyes didn’t blink or shift at the sound of Tsume’s voice.

Tsume’s foot slipped and she felt herself propelling off the wall. She twisted in midair and somersaulted backwards, grasping at the cliff’s side with her hands so she wouldn’t be stranded in the air. Chakra flared – too much, too condensed in the surface of her hands – and she smelled burnt flesh as she skidded to a halt. The dark blot that was Karui disappeared, but several large ones still clustered in her vision. Tsume ripped her gloves off and ignored the chakra burns on the palms of her hands. She unwound Kokoro’s brightly colored scarf from her neck, a little sad to see that blood stained sections of it. She wrapped one end tightly around her left wrist, using her other hand and teeth to tighten it securely.

Thank the Sage that Kokoro always believed that was more was better whenever she knitted. There was a good three meters of length – if Tsume stretched her body and arm, it would be possible to swing the scarf like a whip and snag Karui. Tsume yanked off her bulky boots but left her socks on. She could feel the fragile stone beneath her feet better without the interference from the thick soles. After tying the other end of the scarf in a loop, Tsume shunshinned down the cliff, once more picking up a harrowing level of speed. The clouds had begun to thin as Tsume came up to Karui’s limp body. She edged lower and snapped the scarf out. The edge brushed Karui’s hair before falling loose. 

Cursing mentally since she didn’t have the air to do so verbally, Tsume forced chakra into the length of her arm, and through the unresponsive woolen fibers. She had never been able to duplicate Kokoro or Sasori’s beautiful spider web-fine chakra strings, but all she needed was something that could _stick_. With the scarf drenched in her chakra, Tsume threw it out again. She lost her footing on the cliff and spun head over heels through the air. Tsume twisted her torso in the opposite direction of the spin and straightened upright. Karui’s hair brushed her own.

“All right!” Tsume snagged Karui and tugged her close. Karui was still limp with shock, barely breathing, as Tsume suddenly realized that she was beyond making contact with the cliff. “Damn it!” She dropped the loop around Karui’s shoulders before tightening it beneath Karui’s arms. She double-checked the security of the scarf tied around her wrist, and then wrapped an arm around Karui’s middle. Karui’s body radiated warmth against her frozen skin. As they plummeted through the thinning white, it seemed like they were in a different dimension. Tsume’s thoughts felt like they were slowing down as the adrenaline seemed to be seeping away. She still couldn’t see the bottom of the ravine, and couldn’t see the trail far above where she had jumped off.

A thought, fueled by her intense dislike for all things concerning numbers, jumpstarted her adrenaline: _how much time do I have left before we hit the bottom?_

Tsume spun her feet in the air, causing both kunoichi to cartwheel in mid-air. Okay, so shunshinning wasn’t going to work without a solid surface. She kinda knew that already. _I have to spin over there._ _It’ll be just like doing the Fang Passing Fang._ Tsume had made several successful attempts at launching into one of her clan’s aerial attacks while in mid-air – this should be no different.

_I can do this_. Tsume gathered Karui into her arms, and spiked chakra into the left side of her body as she launched into a spin. It took a dizzy moment – longer than normal – to obtain traction and momentum in the direction she wanted to go. They smashed into the cliff, red shale exploding all around before Tsume brought them out of the spin, still free-falling. Tsume planted her bare hands against the uneven surface, chakra flaring against the burned flesh. Trying not to overdue it, Tsume initially didn’t apply enough chakra. Flesh shredded and she left two bloody hand trails down the cliff’s side before she managed to apply the correct amount to bring them to a sudden halt. Against her hands, she felt the entire cliff vibrate and buckle as a great force slammed into it. She was pretty sure most of the trembling was the cliff – maybe just a little was in her limbs.

Tsume rested her forehead against the frozen stone and tried to catch her breath as Karui’s weight dragged at her left arm. She transferred most of the weight to her feet, which felt a little cold but were otherwise fine in her wool socks. Her head spun even though the world seemed to settle down.

There was a whimper just below Tsume. “Wh-what are you _doing_?!” The last word was pitched into a screech.

Tsume pulled her head from the cliff and glanced over her shoulder. “Coming out of your shock yet?” She paused to breathe some more. Some of the swimming colors in her eyes seemed to improve. “Hey, do Kumo nin know how to use chakra to climb?”

Karui dangled from the scarf, eyes wide and face ashen beneath the dark skin. “Y-you saved me.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Why did…”

“Because someone had to, and we’re kinda stuck together, so I figured, why not.” Tsume took stock of her surroundings. The clouds were definitely thinning now, and she thought she saw a distant ribbon of blue far below – the river that Darui had told her would be at its lowest point. She still couldn’t tell how much more distance they needed to go before reaching the bottom, but that looked closer and easier to reach than trying to head upward to where Darui and Killer B would be. She also didn’t want to get closer to an ongoing aerial fight.

Tsume released her right hand so she could lean further back. She increased the chakra at her eyes, sharpening her vision so she could better estimate how much further down, and ignored the small bits of shale that rained down on them, undoubtedly knocked loose from the vibrating blow she had felt earlier. The drop looked to be about five hundred meters, possibly more. A bolt of adrenaline charged up and down her spine as Tsume realized how far they had fallen. She felt strangely discombobulated – like it should’ve taken more time to fall so far as they had, and yet it had seemed to take forever to rescue Karui.

Okay, her body was feeling kind of weird from the free fall and the altitude – was it better to go up, or to go down? “You didn’t answer my question. Can you chakra climb this cliff? Because if you can’t, I think we’re going to have to climb down.” It would be a lot easier than Tsume manhandling Karui upward.

Karui clawed at the scarf. “ _Look out_!” she screamed, her eyes widening.

Tsume instantly shifted chakra from her eyes to her nose as she shifted positions, hugging the cliff and looking upright. Something dark was plummeting through the clouds – stone, not enemy. No time to dodge or think, only react. She raised her right hand, pouring chakra into it as a shield. It wasn’t enough – the gigantic boulder smashed into her arm just as Tsume realized that she had severely underestimated the side of the boulder. The boulder shattered into smaller pieces around her as the shockwave of pain hit.

Her right arm flopped uselessly at her side as white washed through her vision. She felt her feet and left hand slide down the cliff as her chakra stuttered, trying to maintain the grip, but too distracted from the overwhelming agony.

“Are you all right? Inuzuka-san?” Karui was crying again as she swayed from the scarf. “L-let me help.”

Tsume released her chakra grip. Karui screamed as they plummeted downward. Black and white with flecks of red flashed through Tsume’s vision as she struggled to stay conscious. Karui climbed the scarf hand-over-hand until she was able to grab Tsume, clinging with both arms and legs to Tsume’s torso.

“Control the spin,” Tsume whispered. _Just like with Kuromaru,_ her mind whispered.

(“ _Control is paramount. Yes, a kunoichi can give over to the rage, to the fear, but **she** must control the rage and the fear. You cannot allow it to control **you**_ , _even if you are incapable of fear. Do not be overcome even by amusement or love or pain._ ”

_“Uh, okay, Danzo-sensei._ ”)

Tsume spun Karui one-handed until the Kumo kunoichi’s waist was wrapped in the scarf, and tugged her close, chest to chest. Their spin flipped them upside down in the air and Tsume watched the ground approach closer through her multicolored vision. “Count backwards to one,” she whispered against Karui’s ear. “C-count with me. Fifteen, fourteen, thir-thirteen…” She went with her instincts of how long it would take to hit the bottom, and hoped instinct would serve better than her math skills.

Karui obeyed as her voice stuttered. “Twelve.” She sobbed. “El-eleven. Ten.”

Everything went black for a moment, and even the pain retreated into nothingness. When her vision returned, Karui clung so hard that Tsume could barely breathe through the pain that throbbed through her entire ribcage. “TWO. O-ONE.” Then she screamed.

Tsume spun them and punched her chakra-wrapped left hand into the cliff, claws digging as she desperately tried to slow their assent before striking the ground. Their bodies smashed against the side of the cliff, and Karui shrieked in fear again as Tsume flipped them around, and shunshinned upward, shale shattering beneath her feet. Tsume’s stomach swam as much as her vision did from the abrupt change in momentum. They floated for a brief second, caught between going up and coming down as her feet scrambled against the stone but couldn’t find purchase without chakra.

“Heading down again,” Tsume warned Karui. She tucked and rolled them, landing feet first without any further injury. Oh, the ground was much closer than she had thought… Tsume’s legs instantly collapsed beneath her as everything went white again for a brief moment. She became all too aware of the rounded river stones digging into her backside, and the large pieces of shattered boulder that had hit the ground just before they did. She was also acutely aware of her olfaction warning her of incoming danger.

Karui squeezed and shook Tsume, her breaths quick and harsh. “How did… are you okay?”

Tsume unzipped her coat with her left hand so she could reach her modest cleavage, and used her teeth to unknot Kokoro’s scarf from around her wrist. Then she forced herself to stand upright as three shinobi fluttered down and perched on other boulders not too far away. She made sure to stand between them and Karui, shielding the young teenager.

“You are not a Kumo kunoichi,” the middle said. He was the tallest of the three, fresh bruises blossoming across his bare chest. All three wore fur-covered pants, and their bare chests were crisscrossed by a leather harness. Their skin was covered with a light tan-colored down – or perhaps it was fur. She couldn’t tell from this distance, and her nose wasn’t really saying much except they smelled of deceit and hatred. As Tsume forced her vision to focus on all three of the Yozora nin and made herself breathe through her nose, the middle flared his wings wide in deliberate intimidation. Karui’s voice hitched in a wordless sob and her scent flooded with a new wave of terror. Tsume always wondered what it was like to fly.

Tsume was glad that her heavy winter coat hid her injured right arm, hanging loose and useless at her side. She straightened upward, head high and proud, all too aware of whose forehead protector she wore as an identity around her arm. “I am a Konoha kunoichi.”

“Our fight is with the Kumo nin who have tried for several generations to invade our sacred territory and destroy our clan. If you give us the Kumo kunoichi, we will let you go free. Our fight is not with Konoha.”

Tsume took stock of what she had – one working left arm (palm of hand burned and skinned raw, but otherwise still serviceable), enough summons to wipe out two small countries (Hither and Yon, which really wasn’t much to brag about, Aunt Natsumi once told her), one teenaged chuunin whose fighting style was a complete unknown and who hadn’t quite recovered from the combined shock and terror of their free fall, one dead Konoha shinobi tucked close to her heart, one sealed Amatsu stuffed between her breasts, 25% of her chakra stores, possible acute oxygen deprivation from the high altitudes, and a potent seal.

She’d taken on enemies with less, and walked away from those fights to live another day. If she couldn’t handle three lousy ninja, Danzo would stick her back into remedial training, and she wanted to make a year this time of not having to do through such.

Tsume grinned and bared her teeth in challenge as she channeled chakra to her left hand, extending and enhancing her claws as she braced bones and joints. “It’s true that there isn’t any love between Konoha and Kumo, and I dare say that under any other circumstances, she’d be all yours. Except—” she activated her siren seal at full strength, feeling it burn deliciously as it awakened, blooming across her leg, pelvis, and torso, “—they are _my_ companions for this mission. This kunoichi is _my_ Kumo nin to protect. My sensei refused to ever leave behind a companion, and I will do no less than Hatake Sakumo!”

As the other shinobi froze, freezing when the seal snatched their mind and attention, Tsume shunshinned forward, left hand raised before her with fingers rigidly straight. She aimed high, eyes trained on the shinobi’s throat, but he ducked backwards in the last moment, just as she figured he would. She moved even faster than he moved– the world burred around her as she focused her chakra into all her limbs – and then blood splattered as her hand struck through where he hadn’t blocked. The shinobi’s blood felt boiling hot as she curled her fingers around the pumping organ, and then she dashed backwards without releasing her grip, dropping the seal’s strength by half. She was instantly in front of Karui, swaying only slightly. She raised her left hand in the air to reveal the heart clenched between her fingers, and bared her teeth again as the middle shinobi pitched over, dead, a hole in his chest where she had punched her hand through.

“You bitch!” The left shinobi withdrew the scimitar he had tucked away in his belt. He trembled, caught between desire and rage.

Tsume dropped the heart and stamped it flat with a chakra-enhanced heel. She felt the organ squish beneath her foot and soak her sock as her feral smile melted into something that was simpering and sweet. She fluttered her eyelashes at them – _bedroom eyes_ a target had once called them. She trailed a bloody finger from the line of her jaw downward, over the hollow of her throat, and made a show of dipping her hand into her cleavage while raising the seal to full strength once again, like a cresting wave. The right shinobi’s breath hitched as his pupils dilated. “I am Inuzuka. I am _queen_ _alpha bitch_.”

She launched forward with another attack, the storage scroll shredding as Amatsu was released. She flashed across the distance, again dropping the strength of the seal to fifty percent – the fluctuating strength of the siren’s call long proved to make her male enemies dizzy and confused. She struck the scimitar raised to deflect her blow, and mighty Amatsu shattered the metal. Tsume spun around on her heel as the left shinobi stumbled backwards and the right leapt into the air, wings beating wildly. She cleaved the left shinobi’s head off as the momentum from the spin jarred her right arm. The new throbbing wave of pain nearly brought Tsume to her knees. She forced herself to stay upright even when the world wavered. Damn it – she should’ve used some of her clan’s soldier pills… Did she pack soldier pills? And why was her ax on the ground? It was right there in her hand… oh, maybe not.

By the time it occurred to Tsume that she still had one living enemy, a gigantic ox with eight octopus limbs hit the ground, making the countryside buckle and vibrate from the mighty crash. Water splashed from further away as debris from the demon’s landing rained all about. Tsume toppled over, off-balanced and weak, but Karui caught and held her upright. Karui pressed her face against Tsume’s back and cried softly, hands clenching at Tsume’s coat. Her right arm felt like it was on fire, crushed, dipped in acid, and frozen all at once. It didn’t burn nearly as nicely as her siren seal.

Tsume watched, distantly, as the Hachibi snapped his jaws and crushed the escaping shinobi in its teeth. Then it spat out the body, and swished its tails with a mighty roar. “KARUI!”

Tsume looked at where Amatsu lay on the ground, the wooden shaft covered in blood. She needed to clean it – blood shouldn’t be left on the wood. She lifted her left hand and jabbed her thumb backwards. “Right here,” she called. Her voice sounded distant, like it came through a funnel.

The Hachibi lowered its head with a gigantic huff that would’ve knocked Tsume off her feet without Karui bracing her upright. Her legs felt like they wanted to buckle, so she locked her knees. The look in its ancient eyes as the Hachibi studied her made the hair on the back of Tsume’s arms stir – something sweet curled in the pit of her stomach, even though it also swam with pain and nausea. “You’re hurt,” the great voice rumbled. “But you’re not… scared? How is this possible?” One octopus limb reached downward and uncurled. It deposited Darui safely on the ground, unscathed by the crackling chakra. Darui stumbled, trying to get his legs working once more. He clutched Tsume’s bloodstained knapsack close to his chest.

“No.” Tsume thought that the Hachibi was mighty impressive, even if there seemed to be a lot more tails/limbs that she had originally anticipated. Why an octopus for an oxen? They were totally different animals. And he smelled like he was interested in her. She hoped it wasn’t because the blood made her seem tasty… and where did that extra head come from? Her vision split into two – the left side was higher than the right, skewing images like a broken mirror – as colors washed through in waves just like the throbbing pulses of pain. “Should I be?”

“Sensei, she’s hurt!”

Darui was quickly at Tsume’s side, helping Karui lower her to the uneven ground. Smoothed river rocks dug into Tsume’s backside as Darui carefully extracted her right arm from its coat sleeve. “What did you do?” he asked, voice half-choked in dismay. His searching sweep of her hand became an unexpected lengthy caress. This close, Tsume could smell his desire. Oh come on, she was icky with blood and sweat, with bits of heart stuck under her fingernails and under the heel of her left foot, there was nothing seductive or sexy about her…

“Darui-san, why are you looking at Inuzuka-san like that?”

Tsume abruptly remembered that her seal was still powered at fifty percent. She struggled to tamper it down, to keep it from consuming the male minds – it clung, every bit as stubborn in its refusal to Tsume surrender utterly. She felt her head roll loosely toward her left shoulder. The Hachibi’s chakra caused a sucking sensation on the atmosphere as Killer B released the form. Tsume was able to disguise her seal’s change with the chakra-charged atmosphere, forcing the seal smaller and smaller until she finally gave in, allowing it to linger at a ten percent strength. Damn thing felt rather smug. _You go right ahead on being smug. I’ll just take you right to Jiraiya and have you fixed like a dog I don’t want breeding!_

Somewhere, Tsume hoped that Orochimaru choked to death on his own tongue.

Darui looked dazed as he studied her arm, and then shook his head, whispering _kai_ to dispel what he thought was a genjutsu. “You…” She felt the wash of chakra over her arm. “ _Shit._ You broke every single bone in your arm and pulverized everything in your hand! And what the hell did you do to your collarbone, shoulder blade, and ribcage? How did you manage to fight with this?”

Tsume laughed, and then stopped, because doing so made the pain worse. She was also just now realizing how much it hurt to breathe. Maybe she shouldn’t breathe… “Again? Huh.” She didn’t remember hurting this much. Sounded like the damage was more extensive this time though.

Then Darui did something with his hands against her arm that made everything go senselessly white. When she came to, Killer B was crouching over her, one finger lightly resting against the tip of her nose. He had obtained a small laceration in the line of his hair at some point, which made a trail of fresh blood dribble from his hairline and drip onto his collarbone. She watched as the laceration slowly knit closed.

“Come here. I know that there’s at least one of you who can get a message to the other Konoha nin for me,” he said. Tsume crossed her eyes as a kikaichu, its feet tickling, crawled down her nose and lighted upon the tip of Killer B’s finger. He raised the kikaichu to eyelevel. “Our return to Shikotan has been delayed by at least a week. It will take us another three days to get out of the Great Gorge. In the meantime, I will do everything in my power to protect Inuzuka-san, ensure top-notch medical care, and to bring her back alive and safe to her two young sons. This I swear upon my honor as the guardian and protector of Kumo.”

Tsume thought she heard the remaining kikaichu in her hair buzz and click, before the one on Killer B’s finger flew away.

She managed to stay mostly awake, drifting in and out of senselessness as Darui reduced the broken bones in her arm and hand. He made a special plaster from dried clay that Killer B pulverized into a fine powder beneath his large hands, and shaped a crude cast with driftwood that Karui scavenged up from the exposed riverbed.

“Talk to me,” she told Killer B. He had disposed of the near-by bodies, and now sat close by, studying her with a curious expression with his eyes still hidden behind the sunglasses. Everything was washed in gray. The overhead clouds blocked the sun, the surrounding cliffs were muddied shades of pinkish-red and gray-beige, and even the water seemed dull up close. She couldn’t tell what time it was, or how long it had been since she jumped off the cliff. There were little banks of snow all around the ravine floor, but she felt warm, and was pretty sure that it was because she was no longer hiking through a winter’s cloudbank.

The heavy coat that Killer B had covered her after Darui had exposed her injuries for assessment and care also helped. Killer B didn’t seem bothered by the winter’s chill. “Tell me… why does Karui hate Konoha? Don’tcha know… Don’tcha know hibiscus tea with lemon? Hate, it… it makes you vulnerable, and Karui’s hair is too nice, too red for her to be hateful.” Kushina had never hated, after all. Kushina had loved. People with red hair always seemed so passionate, so bright and so full of life – they shouldn’t fill their passion with hate.

Killer ‘s smile was fond and a little sad. “I think you’re rambling. I’ve known a couple of redheads who were just boring and lackadaisical.”

“Didn’t know I was talking. Guess I am rambling. I’m trying not to think…” The pain was an invading throb that made her want to curl up in a corner and wallow in self-pity, layered with a burning sensation that she didn’t remember the last time. She wondered how she was going to be able to carry her sons home – she thought of the riot act that Kuromaru would read her, and the stern lecture that Shikake would give – probably something about how if your best friend falls off a cliff, you shouldn’t follow after, and the same holds true _especially_ if it’s one of your enemies that falls off a cliff. “Distract me, please?” Karui’s head popped into Tsume’s line of vision, so Tsume reached out with her left hand and touched the red hair. It felt like fine silk beneath her fingertips. Tsume found herself sniffling as an overwhelming sense of loss stole over her. Gosh – how long had it been since she and Mooncalf saved Kushina? It would’ve been on the other side of this mountain rage, where the timberline was clustered with boreal forests.

“We in Kumo say,” Killer B affectionately ruffled Karui’s hair, and for once, Karui didn’t bat away his hand, “that the life you save becomes your own. In a sense, you assume responsibility for that life, because the original owner of such has nothing of greater value to repay you.”

That sounded rather barbaric to Tsume, and totally confusing for the battlefield. Although that probably explained why Kumo rarely released its prisoners of war or other captured nin – apparently they liked holding on to people out of some sort of strange sense of responsibility. 

Tsume had a sudden vision of Kumogakure tagging her ear and then releasing her back into her natural environment at the end of this mission. “I don’t want her life. Got enough of my own. Got tons of children.” She even had two brand new kid back at home whom she was currently sharing with Danzo. She thought it was a clever move on her part… he had never really wanted to involved with her other children before, especially Hana and Kiba. 

“I don’t want you to have my life either!” Karui shouted. “You took my father’s before I was even born! You Konoha nin are nothing more than animals!”

Killer B’s voice was sharp. “Karui! Sit down, now.”

Karui sunk down. She had gone to fetch Amatsu, which she shoved to the side, glaring at the ax as if it were as much a Konoha nin as Tsume, and therefore just as worthy of her resentful belligerence. She pulled her knees up and hid behind them. “She tore that Yozora’s heart out like his chest was made of paper, sensei, and then she stomped it beneath her foot and _smiled._ ” She rubbed her nose and sobbed. “My dad – you Konoha nin gutted him like a fish, and then ripped his spine out like it was nothing! He wasn’t even allowed to die with dignity!”

Tsume looked at her hand as Darui completed her arm, and carefully inspected her fingers. They were twisted and swollen, already turning a solid shade of eggplant purple from extensive bruising. “Wow,” Tsume said. She vividly remembered how her hand looked the last time it had been like this. That would’ve been fifteen years ago… about the same time that Karui’s father died. After he had been, uh, disemboweled and deboned.

Well, gosh. Tsume suddenly found a whole new reason to want to curl up in a corner. She hadn’t realized that this was going to come back and bite her in the butt.

Darui carefully straightened her curled fingers. “I know. Impressive, especially since I can tell that this isn’t the first time you broke every bone in your hand before.” Her fingers felt numb and distant, prickling like someone was pressing needles against her cold flesh; the true pain was in her arm, which now throbbed in staccato like a heartbeat, except the pulse of pain squeezed her entire body. Darui sent another cooling wash of chakra flooding up her arm. It eased some of the painful throbbing, but the relief seemed to stop cold at her shoulder – her ribcage still ached with every breath. But even easing a little bit of pain made it marginally easier for Tsume to think.

Tsume considered Karui as Karui buried her face in her kneecaps and sniffled. She wondered what it was like, trying to be brave after being so scared. She thought of Anko the first time that Tsume had seen her come out of the curse seal, huddled in a ball and crying, and wanted to hug Karui as much as she had wanted to hug Anko. “I’m sure your life is really nice and all, but I don’t want it.”

“I don’t want you to have it either.”

Killer B sighed. “It is what it is. You owe her a great debt, Karui-chan. I doubt anyone from Kumo would’ve jumped off a cliff after you—well, besides me. And maybe my brother, for you are his kunoichi, and a good leader should always try assisting his subordinates in their dire need. Inuzuka-san is a very brave woman.”

No… that definitely couldn’t be right. No one had ever said she was brave before. “You have to be afraid in order to be brave, don’t you?” Tsume asked Killer B. “I can’t… I don’t have the amygdala cells to produce fear. That’s what Tsunade-hime said when Grandmother found me in the forest. What I did wasn’t brave.” The brain damage was too extensive, they said. She would always be stupid and reckless, they said. _(“Worthless meat shield!”)_

“But,” Killer B said, undeterred by Tsume’s information, “your reckless stupidity wasn’t calculated. It was done at a whim, which means that your heart is good and true, and whoever called you a worthless meat shield was a fool. In my lifetime, I have learned that it isn’t our well-thought apologies that reveal who a person truly is, but the moments in which we react without reason. The immediate reaction of a selfish person wouldn’t be to jump off a cliff for someone who is ordinarily their enemy.” He turned to Karui, and announced very firmly, “She’ll hold your life with honor.”

“Damn the honor!” Karui screamed, fingers digging into her kneecaps. She rocked with her face scrunched in stubborn anger as Killer B frowned. “Honor didn’t bring back my father, now did it? Honor left my mother barefoot and pregnant, and then later trying to raise me in a leaky basement because we didn’t have anything!”

“That’s the thing,” Tsume said. “There is no honor in war. But… but I think that Kumo has another saying, a holdover from the Third Shinobi War. There is no shame in saying your loved one was killed by the Yellow Flash, right?”

Or was it Iwa that used to say that? She couldn’t remember.

“That was us,” Killer A replied. “Iwa just said that the only good Yellow Flash was a dead Yellow Flash – no sense of admiration or respect for decent warriors. Figures, since they also went around poisoning Wind’s oases.” Killer A’s scent colored with admiration as he spoke of Minato, although his voice was disdainful as he talked about Iwa. “We in Kumo say there is no shame in knowing you couldn’t outrun the Yellow Flash.”

Tsume leaned forward so she could lightly rest her left hand on Karui’s. She briefly thought that she needed to scrub organ tissue from beneath her claws. “Karui, there is no shame in saying that your father was killed in battle by Namikaze Minato, and not because he ran, either.”

Karui’s eyes teared up. “How would _you_ know? Nobody knows who killed my dad, except that it was Konoha nin.”

Tsume was pretty sure that she was revealing old secrets, but didn’t think that it qualified as S class Intel anymore. “Because I was _there_ , Karui.” Besides, it would make her appear that much less threatening, especially after the whole 2500 meter dive off a cliff thing. Not that her broken body made her appear intimidating, at the moment. “Uzumaki Kushina was my best friend and my genin teammate, so me and D-, uh, someone and Minato were all involved in tracking down Kushina-chan and rescuing her after Kumo kidnapped her.” Tsume kept her gaze – blurry and still shattered in two – trained upon Karui, who seemed to shrink further down the more Tsume spoke. She felt Killer B’s attention keenly – smelled his surprise and wariness as she spoke – and knew that Darui also had to be listening as he continued to straighten and plaster her fingers. 

“Your father was just one of several who died, but he was also the one who stood the longest and fought the hardest. You should be very proud of him.” Tsume figured it was okay to pad the details of a fifteen year old memory that was dim and confused from so many things happening all at once, especially when she passed out so soon afterward from chakra exhaustion. “He was strong, had amazing stamina, and never complained about the pain. He was still fighting even after Minato gutted him, and he’s the only shinobi I’ve ever seen continue to the very end like that. It took accidentally ripping out his spine before he stopped.”

Killer B’s voice was a low rumble. “Accidentally?” Tsume felt the rumble in the earth just below her, like the warning before an earthquake.

Tsume turned her gaze to Killer B. His face was dark and unreadable, his scent carefully still, as if he were trying to guard against her nose. “I was twelve years old. My control was kinda dodgy, okay? I didn’t… I didn’t mean to kill him, not really. I just…” It was hard to recall what exactly when through her mind at that moment. All Tsume could remember at the time was that she _wasn’t_ a worthless meat shield, and also there was too much blood on her sheets, except that had to be wrong, because Danzo had more-or-less hauled her all over the country and they didn’t have a bedroll, much less sheets. Her hand slid limply from Karui’s knee, and tried not to cry. “I just wanted to help Mooncalf, because the other guy seemed to be winning, and I used way too much chakra. I didn’t even know what I was doing. So, see, I owed _you_ a life, Karui, even if I didn’t know it. I think… I think we’re even now.”

Karui abruptly jumped to her feet and stomped away, furiously swiping at her eyes. Killer B watched her go.

“Is she going to be all right?” Darui asked Killer B softly.

“She needs to have some time to herself,” Killer B replied as he glanced after his apprentice. “How’s this one coming along?” He indicated Tsume, which she thought was rather rude, because she was right there.

Darui brushed sweat away from his forehead with the back of his arm, smearing on a streak of rock paste. “As well as can be expected, given my limited repertoire in healing techniques and the extensive damage. If I keep applying steady maintenance as we go and we get our best medics on the job as soon as we arrive to Kumo, I think it’s safe to say that Tsume can keep the use of her limb… although she will wind up feeling every tiny change of weather acutely.”

“Already do.”

Darui gave Tsume a tired smile. “So, exactly how did you manage to break everything in your arm and hand _this_ time?”

“I had just caught Karui. She was looking up, I was looking down, and she warned me about something that was coming at us.” Tsume shifted, trying to get comfortable on the ground. Her knapsack cushioned her back against the boulder she was leaning against, but there was nothing to protect her from the various rocks digging into her butt and legs. “I raised my arm to block, but I couldn’t see the boulder through the clouds – I underestimated its size. Gosh, it was… it was really, _really_ big.” She wanted to say that the boulder had been about the size of a freaking house, but she wasn’t sure if her memory of it wasn’t exaggerated from the excitement of the moment.

Killer B regarded Tsume for a long moment, before he reached over and picked up her ax. Amatsu was always just a little too big for Tsume to use gracefully, but that had never stopped Aunt Natsumi from giving it to her. ( _“So you just have to put a little more strength into using it. An ax isn’t meant to be an elegant weapon – Inuzuka women aren’t known for our grace and beauty. It’s not like we’re a clan of swans, although we’re every bit as deadly.”_ ) In Killer B’s hands, the ax seemed small enough to be an awkward toy.

“You said you couldn’t feel fear.”

“No. The cells responsible for producing fear were destroyed in an injury when I was just six. I never got that part of me back.” Her brain injury had never been a secret from anyone who had half a sense to get _some_ level of Intel on Konoha, but the involvement of Uchiha Madara was something that those who did know could barely believe.

“Ah. Well, so much of your Bingo Book entry and dossier is explained.” Killer B’s smile was wry as he took a rag, wet it down with the water that Darui had left over from creating the paste, and began gently cleaning Amatsu. Tsume sniffed as she watched him, feeling a pleasant warmth settle in the pit of her stomach as she watched him handle the ancient weapon with respect. “I once ran away from Inuzuka Natsumi. Kumo doesn’t remember her the way that we remember Minato – the memories of the Hell Hounds aren’t as fresh – but I feel that there is no shame in saying I survived her and her gouka inugami.”

“Aunt Natsumi and her gouka inugami _are_ impressive, aren’t they?”

He chuckled. “Impressive isn’t the word I was thinking of. Then again, you wouldn’t be scared of the gouka inugami, either. Is there anything that Inuzuka Tsume fears? Does the thought of losing your children not invoke anything?”

Tsume studied her feet and wondered once more what happened to her boots. They seemed a little too important to just _lose._ She was pretty sure she was wearing them before they were attacked…

All she had to do was remember that day, just a few months before the Kyuubi attacked Konoha, when she had barely survived crossing paths with dear, poor, awful, horrible little not-really-Obito (who stank of swamp and trees, just like Yamato). She tasted revulsion in her mouth as she vividly recalled how he deliberately struck her abdomen, crushing the placenta with a dark wave of chakra, and how close she came to losing _her_ son.

Even on that day, in that moment, Tsume couldn’t tell for sure if she had felt fear. “It makes me mad,” she whispered. “My sons are _mine_. I am Inuzuka. I am alpha. What’s mine is mine, and I will kill anyone who horns in on my territory.”

“Ah. Now _that_ I can understand.” Killer B gave Tsume a considering look. He set the ax to the side, and then started to carefully clean her shredded left hand. The bleeding had stopped by the time he gently applied first aid. Gosh, her hand seemed mighty small in his. “It would seem that your sense of possession replaced your sense of fear. Your actions to save Karui make more sense to me, now.”

What made more sense?

“The Hachibi has strong senses, Inuzuka-san. That includes hearing – you said that for this mission, Karui was your companion, and you would do no less than your sensei. We in Kumo have another saying – no man or woman should ever be left behind. We stand as one, and we die as one.”

Sakumo would’ve approved of that saying. Tsume imagine the way his approving smile would’ve spread across his face, lighting up his eyes and bringing sun into her life, if she had ever said anything like that to him.

Then everything momentarily went white once more when Darui forced her arm to bend so he could stuff it in a sling.

“Ah, sorry about that,” Darui said as she came out of the wave of senselessness. “I didn’t see the point in warning you when I knew this would happen. I was hoping that the pain wouldn’t be so bad if you were distracted and didn’t tense up in anticipation.”

Tsume forced herself to breathe despite the horrendous pain. “S’no problem.” Her voice was weak and distant in her ears.

Killer B waited until she was able to breathe without remembering to. “Who’s Mooncalf? You mentioned him before.”

“Hmmm? Oh, that’s just Namikaze Minato.” She grinned at the incredulous look Killer B gave her, his sunglasses almost falling off in shock. “Stupid nickname from when we were in the Academy together. I failed my last year and had to repeat because my memory was so shitty, so I got stuck in the same year as Minato. He was… he always had this goofy daydreaming look on his face.”

Killer B was silent after that, studying Tsume once more with another curious expression on his face.

“We can’t stay here,” Darui said. “The Yozora clan will go looking for their dead clansmen, and will surely find us.”

“Indeed. At least this area is easier to defend than the trail above. Go gather some wood before we leave. We’ll want a warm fire tonight.”

Karui returned as Darui left. Face ducked away, shy, she hurriedly draped Kokoro’s scarf across Tsume’s lap before retreated a few steps, kicking at stones and still not looking at Tsume.

Tsume tugged on the scarf – it was damp, and all visible traces of blood had been washed away. She sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Gosh, thanks.”

Karui kicked at another stone and jammed her hands into her pockets, sneaking a quick glance at Killer B, who beamed at Karui with paternal pride – Tsume remembered getting that look from Sakumo. Gosh, she missed the old Sakumo, with his quiet wisdom, contentment, and occasionally humorous confusion over being a single father trying to raise a genius son.

Karui still looked belligerent as she spoke. “Yeah, well, you’ve still got the responsibility for my life. Kumo killed your grandmother in the Second War, after all, and wartime deaths aren’t the same as peacetime, especially when we’re companions on this mission. I owe you for saving my life – you don’t owe me anything, not even for what happened to my father.” Karui mumbled the last of that in her collar, cheeks and ears burning bright.

Tsume wondered if she would be inadvertently insulting if she pointed out how much she was indebted to Kumo for killing Inuzuka Shinzou. Then she decided that it was probably best not to seem antagonizing when Karui was doing her best to make her sensei happy. “The wings – are they a bloodline limit, or were those guys born with them?” Someone had once told her that there was a clan in Lightning that had wings. Or maybe it was something she dreamed about, long ago.

“They come natural. We try not to think of the physics. Can you walk, Inuzuka-san?”

Tsume forced herself to focus on Killer B. “Yeah, sure. My legs are fine.”

He frowned. “What happened to your boots?”

Tsume wiggled her toes in her socks. At least her feet felt fine. And she had walked through in Lightning before without any shoes, so it wasn’t like it would kill her. “Dunno.”

Killer B instantly began to riffle around in Darui’s bag. “The risk of frostbite and losing your toes is too great this time of year. Ah hah!” He brought forth the bag that they had originally offered Tsume in Shikotan. “We in Kumo say to always bring spares and never throw away the extra!” His teeth sparkled with his wide smile.

“You’re, uh, too kind. You shouldn’t – no, really, you shouldn’t.” Tsume cringed as he slipped the boots on anyway. She’d much rather get frostbite. Ew. She knew exactly where the boots had been, and wondered if this qualified as an official act of war.

“Now, you may stand.”

Stupid jelly for legs… Tsume managed to get upright with a little bit of help from Killer B (all right, a lot of help – he just picked her up and set her on her feet like she was nothing more than a bulky sack of feathers). _Staying_ upright required a lot more effort.

“I’ll carry you,” Killer B decided. “Hup, hup. Hold onto my shoulders now.”

Tsume decided that she liked riding Killer B. He was warm, comfortably large, and his waist (which she had sort-of wrapped her legs around to hold her in place) fit between her knees just right. Oooooh, this had potential!

“Thank you,” Killer B said, sounding modest even as the back of his neck and the tips of his ears burned a bright red. He didn’t smell upset, however. Er, which meant that she had said something out loud that she probably shouldn’t have.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Tsume heard Karui whisper to Darui. “What if she tries to kill sensei, like cut his throat or something?”

Darui smelled embarrassed. “Kid, the only death those two share an interest in happens to be of the little, enjoyable type, which is funny, given the shape she’s currently in.”

“What?”

“I’ll, uh, explain when you’re older.”


	33. Delta Years - Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I'm having so much fun exploring Kumo's culture! None of this is really canon, but at least I'm having fun. :D

“So, the good news is that Tsume is alive,” Hotaru announced to her team leader in a low whisper. She stared cross-eyed at the kikaichu that balanced on the top of her nose. After a moment of listening, in which Hotaru nodded her head a few times, she continued on. “The even better news is that Tsume saved the life of the Kumo kunoichi, thereby placing the team in her debt.”

“What’s the bad news?” Shikake asked, because in his experience, there was always some bad news to go along with the good news, especially when it involved his female offspring.

“Well.” Hotaru lightly brushed her fingertips against her hair and looked nervous. “Tsume jumped off a very high cliff to save the kunoichi, apparently, and was in a bad position when they were struck by a falling rock. Tsume was able to successfully block it, but she broke every bone in her hand in doing so.”

Shikake thought of the last time that Tsume broke every bone in her hand. He sighed as different strategies began to play out in his mind. “And how do we know that the Kumo nin won’t take advantage of her momentary weakness?”

“Killer B assured Doki here that he would personally ensure Tsume’s ongoing health and safety, and promised to return her to her sons. Doki hid and kept watch a while longer after being dismissed, just to make sure that Killer B kept his word.”

Shikake wondered if he should be surprised that Hotaru named her kikaichu. Was Doki a collective or individual name? “There’s other kikaichu to help, isn’t there?”

“Yes. Ke, Fuu, Mah, Go, Rin, and Hi still remain.”

Well, that answered _that_ burning question. Shikake could barely keep track of his two children and seemingly endless grandchildren that Tsume was always eagerly adding more of – he couldn’t imagine keeping track of a substantial colony of kikaichu. He resumed carefully sorting through the stacks of herbs that he had obtained from the various markets – street, black, and otherwise – that sat upon the table that he had absconded from the dining room. Kiba and Naruto were just down the hall with Anko, listening to Jiraiya telling one of his stories. Shikake would’ve been worried about what sort of stories Jiraiya would be filling their minds if he didn’t know that Anko would readily try stuffing a foot into Jiraiya’s mouth if they weren’t decent. “Nothing we can do right now, except send a message to the Hokage that we’re extending our stay until Tsume’s returned to us.”

Trust his only daughter to be such a hassle. At least her heart was in the right place this time, even if her head – as usual – hadn’t been.

“I expected as much.” Hotaru crossed her eyes to look at Doki once more. “Pass the word on to my brother, so he can tell the Hokage.” The kikaichu clicked a reply, and then flew off her nose and to the window. It waited patiently until Hotaru yanked the window open. The brief gust of wind that jumped through the window stirred Shikake’s piles out of place.

Sigh. What a bother.

oOoOoOo

Day Six from Shikotan, Tsume spent most of the trip asleep from pain and exhaustion. Her chakra levels were almost nonexistent by time the Gyuuki had killed the last Yozora, and the combination of only 15% remaining chakra and the extensive injuries meant that recovery for either was slowed down. It also made it next to impossible to quiet her seal completely, which she would’ve realized earlier if she hadn’t been in so much pain.

Darui made sure they paused several times that day in order to send careful waves of healing chakra through Tsume’s arm and ribcage. Tsume refused to eat anything, since the thought of food made her stomach swim with a suspicious queasiness, but she drank the water when Darui insisted. Karui remained quiet, watching Tsume with a slightly-resentful thoughtfulness. The resentfulness always worsened because Darui and Killer B voted unanimously that Karui had to assist Tsume with personal hygiene when needs necessitated such. Tsume tried to insist that she could handle peeing just fine thankyouverymuch, but then realized it was too difficult to manage her winter gear one-handed while trying to squat.

They moved quickly through the gorge, carefully climbing up the slanting areas. They avoided the higher reaches, where Killer B said the Yozora clan was most likely to watch and guard.

“So, what exactly is going on between Kumo and this here flying clan? If it isn’t, you know, classified.”

“It is,” Darui muttered.

“Territory disputes,” Killer B supplied. “And the only reason I’m telling you is because you got caught in such.”

All right, Tsume could respect that. If she was in a better state of health, she’d increase the chakra at her nose to get a better picture of what was going on with the Yozora clan, but as it stood, she needed to preserve what she had so she could complete the heart of her mission upon entering Kumo.

oOoOoOo

Day Seven from Shikotan, Tsume decided to give up all semblance of subtlety. She was half-giddy with pain and had just spent the last two days with Killer B firmly between her knees. There were just some things a woman had to do for her own sake. “I’m not allowed to seduce the Raikage. All my COs were very clear about that.”

“It’s just as well,” Killer B said, “you’re a little too…” he hesitated, “uh, _female_ for my brother’s preference.”

Yeah, Danzo had made that snide remark before she left that _he_ would have better success seducing the Raikage than Tsume would without her seal. “In fact, I was sternly told not to seduce anyone. That just wouldn’t go good for the whole negotiation of peace and that kind of thing.”

“It’s important to think of the big picture.” Killer B’s voice was placid and serene, but he smelled disappointed.

Tsume traced the fingertip of her good hand across the back of Killer B’s neck. “However, it’s not seduction if I just outright ask you if you wouldn’t mind having sex with me before I leave, once most of the damage has been healed, right? So, uh, wanna have sex with me later?”

Behind them, Tsume heard Darui and Karui stumble in surprise, and then rapidly whisper at each other. “Did she just say what she thought I said?”

“The Inuzuka women have long been rumored to be bold.”

“There’s bold, and then there’s just cheeky foolhardiness!”

“Hmmm.” Killer B gave Tsume’s offer a strong consideration as the back of his neck and the tips of his ears colored once more. “Well, if you’re not too busy with your various duties as a diplomatic envoy…”

“Oh, believe me, the fewer duties I have as an envoy, the less damage I’ll cause. As you can see, trouble has this way of finding me. So, you’ll do everyone a favor if you bed me, because then it means I’m staying in one place and will definitely be too busy for trouble to find.” Tsume was very proud of herself for thinking up this reasoning while being giddy and lightheaded. “You’ll be keeping me supervised the _entire_ time.”

Karui’s voice was caustic. “That I can believe.” Then, in a low whisper to Darui, “Isn’t she a little _young_ for sensei’s taste?”

Darui coughed. “Well, part of the reason Killer B likes ‘em a wee bit older is because he has a mother kink, and since he’s seen her with her children, Inuzuka-san suits him just fine.”

“We can hear you,” Tsume said, looking over her shoulder. Then she squeaked when Killer B somehow managed to pinch her buttock suggestively, despite her heavy winter coat.

Karui pulled a face and stuck her tongue out. “And so can we! Fair’s fair.”

oOoOoOo

Day Eight from Shikotan, Tsume was feeling well enough to try sending minute amounts of chakra through her arm and ribcage, slowly but surely quickening the healing process. Darui continued to also provide aid. He was graceful but inefficient, which was more of an indication that his talent for healing was rarely used and thus somewhat underdeveloped.

They had to take refuge against another winter storm, this time in a cave that Killer B was familiar with. It took rooting out the sleeping bear (which Tsume silently disapproved of, because she felt she probably could’ve talked the bear into letting them stay), which Karui did with aplomb since Killer B made it into a teaching lesson for her.

When Darui mentioned that their supplies were running low as he set about making a fire from yew wood and sage brush gathered from a snow-barren steep mountain side, Killer B decided that going out to hunt down a mountain goat was another perfect lesson for Karui. In the bloodthirsty manner of many a teenaged kunoichi, Karui readily agreed, and prepared by sharpening all her weapons. After realizing what she felt well enough to want was some fresh meat, Tsume happily pointed Killer B and Karui to the direction her nose said that some nearby mountain goats would be.

That left Tsume alone with Darui, propped up against her knapsack. She kicked off the sordid boots that were still on loan, and aimed her toes at the fire with a satisfied sigh. Darui was quietest of all Tsume’s Kumo companions, voicing words like a purse-clutching miser trying to evade a charity.

“So, how much longer do we have left? We’re out of the gorge now and back up in the mountains.”

Darui tilted back on his heels and studied the cave ceiling. Tsume glanced upward – it was a boring cave ceiling – didn’t even have any decent stalagmites or stalactites, just the same uniform pale red-and-beige color that she was used to seeing in the rocky cliffs and shale. “Even without the added delay of losing our path due to the fight, we’re not moving as fast as we originally anticipated. I told Killer B – you were out cold at the moment – that I felt it unwise to hasten our pace with your injuries, even if I was able to keep them stabilized. You’re at a very high risk of embolisms because of how you broke the large bones of your arm and the flat bones in your sternum, and jostling could potentially break free any debris to create a clot. We still have another four days in the least – possibly up to a week if more snowstorms come through.”

Tsume thought of her poor sons and Anko being stuck in Shikotan for a much longer time. She hoped her boys didn’t get contaminated from the prolonged exposure. Maybe she could send a message that it was best they head home and the Hokage could send a relief team to wait for her instead. Hmmm. How many kikaichu did it take to carry a message scroll? Maybe if she wrote really, really small…

“Don’t feel bad,” Darui said, misreading her expression. “Killer B promised to get you back to your sons, and he means it. He doesn’t make promises that he doesn’t keep, and no one – not even the Raikage – will interfere with his promise. Unless you do something _incredibly_ stupid.”

The little voice in Tsume’s head that sounded like Danzo pointed out that Tsume doing something incredibly stupid – like propositioning Killer B for sex – was just a matter of time, not a matter of chance. She ignored that little voice. “Killer B seems like an honorable man.”

“He prides himself on such, yes. Honor is something of great value in the mountains, here, and we all pride ourselves on it.”

Tsume mulled over her thoughts for a moment, and then mentally shrugged. “You have a lot of respect for him, even though he’s a jinchuuriki.” Darui said nothing, but the look he gave Tsume would’ve flayed flesh from bone. “I guess it’s no secret that Uzumaki Kushina was our jinchuuriki – that’s why you guys kidnapped her during the Second Shinobi War. I didn’t know what she was until just a few weeks ago, even though we were genin teammates, and then we became chuunin together, and basically grew up to be adults together. I think she was scared to tell me, but I don’t think it would’ve made a difference if she had.”

Darui shrugged. “Just because you’re incapable of fear doesn’t mean that others are.”

“No, even if I never had my brain injury, I don’t think that I would’ve been scared of the tailed beasts.” Tsume shook her head. She had been horrified with the destruction that the Kyuubi had caused when it rampaged through Konoha, but she hadn’t been frightened or repulsed. “I doubt you’ve heard the First Mother – it’s one of the Inuzuka oral traditions, about the Sage of Six Paths and the origin of the nine tailed beasts. The First Mother came up south, across the ocean, and followed the Juubi across the Elemental Nations because she liked playing with him.”

Darui gave Tsume a skeptical look. “Playing what? Fetch?”

Tsume imagined herself playing fetch with a ten-tailed Kyuubi. (Having only ever seen the Kyuubi in all its glory before this trip, Tsume imagined all the other demon beasts as the Kyuubi, except with the proper amount of tails.) She wondered how big of a stick she’d need, and how much chakra it would take to throw. “Sure, I guess. Dodge, too, and probably tag.” Fetch actually sounded like it would be a lot of fun.

He chuckled softly, the sound of his voice almost disappearing into the crackling snaps and pops from the fire. “Now you’re just pulling my leg.”

Tsume wiggled her ankles, knocking her feet together. It didn’t hurt to move her legs, but her arm and hand were burning again. She brought the pain down a little bit by sending another wash of chakra through her limb. Her current stores were about 35%, and with a minimum of four days of travel, she should be somewhere in the 60’s by the time they reached Kumo. She sniffed. “Smells like they caught a female.”

“You really are an excellent tracker,” Darui commented.

“Thanks. All part of being an Inuzuka.”

Darui was silent for a moment, jabbing the fire even though it didn’t need to be stirred. “Just don’t… don’t lead Killer B on, if you don’t mean anything. He likes you – you’re an honorable woman, you adore children, you saved Karui even if you didn’t have to, and you don’t fear what he is. They’re rare qualities for Killer B to find in any woman, especially locally. So…”

“Is this you trying to tell me not to break his heart? Or that sex shouldn’t be an option?”

Darui’s cheeks flushed dark. “No, it’s… The sex wouldn’t be the problem – it’s you being Konoha and him being Kumo.”

Tsume didn’t think she believed in storybook romances. “I know that Kumo and Konoha aren’t on the best of the terms – I doubt that will improve much, even with the new treaty and the package I have to deliver, but…” Tsume felt tired. She thought of the long-ago strengthened bonds between Konoha and Suna, all because of a twelve year old boy who decided that he could best survive the loss of his legs as a conduit for the poison that wiped out his team and destroyed a rare desert spring, and a too-pregnant teenaged simpleton who insisted on helping him. She just wanted to lay back and fall asleep. “But we have to start somewhere, don’t we?”

“I guess.” The corners of Darui’s mouth pulled down unhappily as Tsume rolled over and let the darkness creep over her.

oOoOoOo

Day Nine from Shikotan, Tsume finally had enough chakra to show Darui how to be more efficient with directing his chakra to be more efficient in healing. She was getting tired of chakra washing up her arm and torso and then not really doing everything that it could. Most ninja could do basic healing – surface things, of knitting skin and muscle cells together and reattaching large blood vessels, even large bones that had clean breaks. The human body’s natural defenses could usually destroy foreign microbes that entered the body during the healing. Complex healing, like internal organs and bones shattered and splintered into small pieces required a much more deft touch. If cells were forced to replicate wrong, the potential for cancer was substantially high.

“A tracker _and_ a medic. A very useful combination,” Darui said as he followed her directions.

“Yeah, well, as you said, it’s very useful.” Tsume didn’t think that pointing out that her brother’s team usually only had the potent healing ointments from the Nara clan instead of a decent medic was such a hot idea, because that was probably not the best information to give to enemies. She felt rather proud of herself for holding her tongue on this matter. She then hoped she hadn’t said anything too incriminating in the last few days, especially the day she had broken everything.

oOoOoOo

Day Ten from Shikotan, Tsume felt well enough to try walking some of the distance on her own. This idea was quickly shot down, because now most of the travel could be done over a relatively flat surface now that they had crested the mountains, and Killer B wanted to make up for lost time. Tsume decided to just sit still as she centered herself on his back, and enjoyed the scenery. There were fields of white as far as the eye could see, and under the bright sun, the snow glittered like sheets of crystals. In dawn and dusk, when the sun was rising and setting, the colors lit the snow up like pink flamingos on fire. She loved how colorful winter was, far up north. They hadn’t yet allowed her to stay out overnight to watch the Aurora Borealis, but she figured she could talk them into letting her do so once they arrived in Kumogakure.

“It’s going to be blasted cold tonight,” Darui said, shielding his eyes so he could look overhead. “We’ll need to find shelter soon.”

Karui’s sigh was long-suffering. “We’re going to have to bunk together, aren’t we?”

“Yup.”

That shouldn’t be too bad, Tsume considered. She had slept with more unsavory characters before, although admittedly it hadn’t been for preserving body warmth.

Unfortunately, she got stuck with Karui, who was a very restless sleeper who liked sticking her cold feet against any warm body part. Tsume thought that Darui’s suggestion that the women stick together was a vindictive response to yesterday’s conversation.

oOoOoOo

Day Eleven from Shikotan was spent with her companions still hunkering down in their cave. Tsume watched as the blowing snow outside piled higher and higher, and fervently wished that it would stop snowing. She was also tempted not to wait until it was no longer snowing, especially because her Kumo companions’ idea of winter storm preparation included storage scrolls stuffed with coal and yak dung.

“This stinks,” she grumbled, breathing through her coat sleeve. Shikotan had smelled marginally better, but that was largely because of the open mountain air.

“But it keeps us warm,” Killer B replied lightly as he added an extra yak chip to the fire.

oOoOoOo

Day Thirteen from Shikotan, Killer B dug their way out of the deep snow banks. They spent a few mid-morning hours showing Tsume how to balance with her chakra on the snow, but that proved to be a futile exercise, especially when all Tsume wanted to do was scrub her nostrils out with the fresh snow. Deciding that they didn’t have enough time for her to overcome her handicaps, Killer B hefted Tsume onto his back again, and they moved much faster over the smooth snow to once more make up for lost time.

Tsume wondered if the Raikage was simmering in a corner somewhere, blaming the delay on Tsume like she had tried to kill the Kumo nins and bury the evidence.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Killer B said with a wave of his hand. “My brother is much more sensible that that.”

oOoOoOo

A was so _not_ simmering. He told himself this as he crossed the ice bridge network from his tower to one of the bunker houses, and ignored how the snow melted in the wake of his killing intent as innocent bystanders scattered. He pounded once on the wall beside the second-story window and then stormed inside without waiting for permission to enter. It was his village, after all. “NII. WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

In Kumo, teams were housed together with their jounin sensei or captain to promote better team function. It also made it easier to mobilize teams when time was of the essence. Yugito Nii currently stayed with Killer B’s team, largely because her original teammates were all dead, and partly because the jinchuuriki could spar with each other using their full-strength without too much worry of killing or crippling their opponent. Also, Nii had a very obvious-to-everyone-with-eyes crush on Killer B’s next door neighbor, who was a level-headed Academy teacher named Mina. Living next door put Nii in the perfect position to borrow cooking utensils, cups of sugar, exchange laundry tips, and otherwise proceed in a very clumsy manner in trying to seduce Mina. So far, nothing had happened despite Nii’s best efforts. This was largely due to the fact that Mina was completely oblivious to the flirtations of another woman. Although A wasn’t too sure that Mina would be able to pick up flirtation from a man, either. She was a great Academy teacher in that she was excellent with rote memorization of history and techniques, but a terrible kunoichi because she was too oblivious to survive field assignments.

Also, Killer B’s chuunin were terrors when they were sick, and Nii rarely had the opportunity to smother anyone with her maternal instincts. It was a match made in Nii’s best dreams, and Samui and Omoi’s worst nightmare.

Nii barely looked up from her cross stitch of wilted flowers. “Shhhh. The kids are asleep.”

A considered the cross stitch, and thought of getting Nii some more therapy. He had started cross stitching as a personal hobby ten years ago at Killer B’s encouraging, because he “ _yo_ , _you_ _really need a hobby that’s safe, like knitting mittens – maybe even consider something with kittens,”_ and found that he quite enjoyed it. Then he decided that he needed to enter his completed projects in local contests because he always had a strong sense of competition, except there weren’t any local contests or even clubs for such.

Because the cross stitch had been so beneficial for his mental well-being and relaxation, one of A’s first declarations as Raikage was to make cross stitch mandatory in the Academy and for all active shinobi. This also ensured competitions and contests for best cross stitch in various categories, making it the best sort of win-win in A’s world.

A later decided that cross stitching was perfect in the therapy they used to rehabilitate their prisoners, and often had the prisoners sit with the Academy’s children for beginner lessons. It helped in humanizing Kumo in the captives’ eyes, _and_ added to the pool of competition. (A felt _everything_ improved with a healthy level of competition, after all.)

As a hobby, it was meant to encourage his ninjas to focus on something that wouldn’t wear on the soul. He was fairly sure that cross stitching the current wording utterly defeated the point.

“Are you going to enter anything this year?” he couched carefully. Nii had always refused to do more than the mandatory single pattern a year before, mainly because she failed to see the point and called the whole thing a _ludicrous waste of time that can be spent in honing skills,_ until an upper ranking jounin managed to single-handedly capture and subdue an entire ambushing four-man team of Kiri nin last year using only embroidery floss and a hoop. Since then, she begrudgingly embraced her artistic side.

“Maybe. What do you think?” She turned her cross stitch sideways so he could study it a little better.

_Behold, the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren_.

“Really?” A asked, raising an eyebrow at the message.

Ni bristled in self-dense. “The lettering is even!”

A considered the stitches, and then nodded. “They really are.” Nii must’ve had someone with a good eye trace the pattern on the canvas with pencil since A knew that the best of Nii’s stick flowers didn’t have such lifelike proportions, but at least she was following the tracings well enough. “I like how you managed to make the flowers appear so lifeless.”

Nii huffed and tossed a long lock of blond hair over her shoulder. “You don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I can smell it.”

Oh. That’s right – he was there because it was very important to find out where his brother was with that Konoha kunoichi harlot, not to discuss Nii’s latest endeavor with cross stitching. “I need you to tell me if you can sense Killer B, how far away he is, and if he’s hurt.”

Nii’s eyes narrowed and flashed briefly. “Do you think something’s happened? You know that they’d be delayed by the most recent blizzard that rolled through.”

_Blizzard or not, that idiot’s been gone for far too long. I don’t trust anything about that Inuzuka woman._ “He really should’ve been here before the storm rolled through. I’m willing to allow that there may have been some valid delays – the passes are not safe to travel during winter, after all, and they’re dealing with an inexperienced flat-lander – but I have a very limited window of time before the Hokage will begin to wonder what happened to his kunoichi, and I don’t want a war to start simply because _his_ nin was tardy.” If A was going to start a war, it would be one of his own choosing, thank you very much.

Nii shrugged at that, and shoved her chair away from the kitchen table before heading to a closed window. Yugito Nii had the making for an unremarkable sensor nin like the rest of her clan – barely worth her talents in sensing other’s chakra, destined to be as mediocre as her forefathers, even though sensor nin were rare stock – but Matatabi enhanced Nii’s talents and abilities tremendously. After becoming the Raikage, A had worked hard to make sure that Nii developed her full potential as a sensor nin, figuring that it would help her avoid fights. Unfortunately, he had neglected to work just as hard in making sure that she would _want_ to avoid fights. Hindsight was a real pain in the ass, sometimes.

Nii opened the window, brushed the snow off the sill, and then closed her eyes to concentrate. A felt her chakra flicker as she searched. After a few moments, Nii secured the window shut and walked back to the table. She said nothing as she seated herself once more and picked through the embroidery floss until she selected a dark shade of red.

“Well?” A refrained from snarling at Nii. She had a disturbing habit of hissing when someone challenged her, even if it was her Raikage. A still hadn’t managed to figure out how Matatabi could be so polite and its host so rude.

“Killer B is fine. Karui is fine. Darui is fine. That Konoha kunoichi, on the other hand, is not so fine.” Nii stuck her tongue out. “Her chakra tasted of severe pain. Her chakra is kinda funny anyway, almost like she’s got a streak of poison contaminating it.”

The only thing that A wanted to know more about Inuzuka’s chakra was the injury. “Does the pain feel accidental or deliberate?” A really didn’t want to explain to Killer B that it would be highly inappropriate to kidnap the diplomatic envoy and that rehabilitation of an Inuzuka was bound to be next to impossible. Historically, Konoha nin’s rehabilitation was a lousy 7%, whereas Kiri nin rehabilitated successfully at a cool 80%, should they survive the winter and altitude change. (Kumo was good at many things, including capitalizing off of Stockholm Syndrome.) A also had no intention of doing anything that would make Inuzuka Natsumi and her insane number of summons invade Kumo in an attempt to rescue her Clan Head.

“Dunno, but there doesn’t seem to be tension in Killer B’s chakra, and Gyuuki feels like he’s in a good mood.” Nii shrugged and threaded the floss. “I’d have some of the medics on stand-by when Killer B’s team finally comes in, but wouldn’t worry if I were you. He seems to have everything handled, and they’re only a day’s travel still from Kumo.”

A wanted to do more than just have a team of medics on stand-by. He was going to have to do some fancy letter-writing in regards to Inuzuka’s injury. He hoped that she came by it in good faith – receiving an injury at Killer B’s hands may cause an international incident. While his head jounin was a total asshole and unilaterally unpopular, A got the feeling from her dossier that Inuzuka Tsume was well-liked by certain powerful persons. One didn’t share a mutual gardening hobby with someone as misanthropic as the War Hawk if one wasn’t competent with “ _gardening_ ”, for instance.

And the more he thought about it, the more A suspected that gardening implied that _someone_ was getting plowed, and that no actual horticulture was involved.

“Relax.” Nii didn’t even look up from her work. “You worry too much about this.”

He growled. “The last time I didn’t worry about an envoy was just before that ass went and tried to kidnap a pint-sized clan heir without my permission.”

“I still think you should’ve sent Konoha a medal for getting rid of him.” Nii gave him a side-eyed look. “No one liked him, Raikage-sama.”

“He may have been an ass, but he was _Kumo’s_ ass. You don’t send a medal to an enemy village just because they did an unwitting favor for you.”

Nii shrugged. “Whatever,” and flashed the cross stitch at A, as if to emphasis how much she didn’t care about the loss of Kumo’s head jounin.

oOoOoOo

Day Fifteen from Shikotan, they finally crossed the threshold into Kumo. Tsume had hidden the shift of chakra to her nose by doing small healing session with her arm to try decreasing some of the spectacular array of purple shades that covered her entire arm and had spread half-way across her ribcage. Tsume didn’t like the color purple – she was always more partial to crimson and gold – and hated the look of it on her skin. Most of Kumo was buried beneath thick layers of stark-white snow – dark windows dotted piles of white. A construction of ice bridges and walks suspended above the ground ran the length of the entire village, crisscrossing over each other. In the afternoon sunlight, the bridges and walks glittered like diamonds and cast multiple rainbows.

“Ah, home sweet home,” Killer B declared as he paused to take in a deep breath of frigid air.

Tsume made a show of sniffing a little, because it would be a suspicion thing if she didn’t – and then huffed into Killer B’s hair. “Konoha smells better. We’ve got actual trees. But Kumo is beautiful.” She craned her neck for a better looks. “I’ve never seen anything so… so like that. It’s like it’s made from crystals and diamonds, like an enchanted ice palace. I know I shouldn’t ask why you’ve made them, because that would be prying and looking for information when the Hokage said I can’t ask questions, but I never thought that Kumo would look so _pretty_.” She watched as a crowd of Academy children, bundled against the cold and laughing, skidded across one of the bridges.

“We do too have trees,” Karui declared as she bumped through the guards at the gates that were inspecting paperwork. “They just happen to be buried right now. Can we hurry up on this? I’m behind on this year’s project and I just remembered that I have to have it done in a month so I can submit it for the Fourth Chuunin Quadrant’s division of the New Year’s Fresh Beginnings Contest.”

“Told you that you should’ve brought it along,” Darui said. “You could’ve gotten a jump on it while we were waiting out that blizzard.”

Tsume peeked over Killer B’s broad shoulder in time to see Karui’s face burn bright red before punching Darui in the arm. “Not in front of the _Konoha_ kunoichi!”

“But your flowers are so vivid. I think Inuzuka-san would be impressed – she did show us those crayon drawings her sons gave her as a parting gift in Shikotan. She seems the sort to appreciate art.”

“Shut up!”

Tsume desperately needed to know what this project was about, now.

“We need to head immediately for the hospital,” Killer B told the guards.

“No need.” The guard who spoke kept shifting his gaze towards Tsume. “The Raikage told us that you’re to head straight for his office, and he already has a team of medics on stand-by to arrive there once you hit these gates. Welcome back, by the way, Killer B.”

The guard and Killer B exchanged friendly fist bumps. “It’s good to be back.” The snow had been shoveled away from the gates, creating a deep path that started a hundred meters away from Kumo’s walls, and funneled foot traffic to the gates. The snow on either side of the path was well above Tsume’s head. Steps had been carefully constructed from the entrance of the gates that spiraled around into an ice bridge that rose above the snow. Tsume felt like she was part of a fairy tale as Killer B gracefully mounted the steps, but a nice fairy tale – one that didn’t end with the witch eating the children and enslaving the father’s soul. There were splashes of pastel color everywhere, of pink, green, blue, and yellow – children probably playing with food dyes – that added a layer of ethereal wonder of the ice bridges.

“We need to go immediately to the Raikage,” Killer B said as Karui and Darui followed closely behind.

“How do you think Omoi and Samui are feeling by now?” Karui asked Darui.

“Smothered,” was Darui’s single-word reply.

Tsume catalogued different scents, not looking for anything in particular during her initial arrival. She let all the scents wash over her as she gazed with wonder upon the different ice sculptures that were erected hither and yon. Some of them were plain – a square block with a hole in the center, a triangle balanced on a point – and others were elaborate, like the lifelike swan with its wings fanning wide or a dragon rearing upright. Konoha was colorful, but it didn’t have artwork everywhere.

Tsume was contemplating how to best introduce the idea of wood carvings (because one had to work with what one had, and ice just wasn’t practical in Konoha – she bet that Yamato would do _marvelous_ ) to the Hokage when they entered a nondescript building via its second-story window. The lower part of the building was deeply buried in snow. The inside was made of the same gray slate of the outside, but the air was surprisingly warm. The window was lined with seals that provided warmth – it seemed like a much better idea to Tsume’s poor abused nose than yak dung.

The furniture was simple, hand-hewn from wood and roughly at that – Tsume hoped she wouldn’t get splinters if she sat down. Once Karui and Darui had followed them into the building, Killer B gently set Tsume down on the floor. She tottered a few steps before she felt that her legs were securely under her and the floor didn’t require chakra to remain above the surface. It felt good to be walking on something solid.

“You’ll be all right from here.” Killer B didn’t make it sound like a question, but it felt like one as he divested her of the heavy winter coat she’d been wearing for nearly two weeks. She wanted to put it back on because she could smell herself, then figured that the Raikage was probably used to smelly shinobi, especially when they packed along _yak_ _dung_ for fire fuel.

“I’m good. Let’s go.” Tsume double-checked her jury-rigged sling and added some extra chakra to bring her pain level back down to something that wasn’t so distracting now that she didn’t have a winter wonderland to take her mind off of her condition. Much to her chagrin, Tsume had learned that increased chakra levels hadn’t yet allowed her to subdue the seal completely. She wondered if the extensive injury and ever-present pain was responsible – she had never before used her seal when she was badly injured, and the only time she’d ever been close to being _this_ injured had been when she desperately performed her own C-section and developed a nearly-fatal infection. And then another near-fatal infection when her impromptu stitching ripped open. And she hadn’t tried using her seal back then.

Tsume also double-checked to make sure that her precious cargo was still close to her heart. The scroll had shifted a little and she tried to be subtle as she poked around her bra to make sure that it hadn’t fallen out – nope, still there.

Karui poked her left side. “ _Please_ don’t do that in front of the Raikage!” she hissed, her cheeks red once more.

“What? What don’t I do?” Tsume asked as she was led down the hallway. Some of the male nin in the hallway – paper pushers and guards – eyed her, heads swiveling for better looks. Those who didn’t look up from their work showed no additional interest when they failed to make visual contact with her person.

The single door that opened into the Raikage’s office was as utilitarian and as rough as the rest of the building. Tsume wasn’t sure of what she’d see, but somehow the gruff, muscular man with the blond goatee wasn’t a surprise, especially as he rested his crossed arms on the table and glared at her, as if affronted by her presence or smell. “Well.” His voice was strong, the throaty pitch deep enough to rattle her bones. “At least you’re not _dead._ ”

Tsume figured that would be a good thing, but the Raikage made it sound like a personal insult. “Killer B is very good at keeping people alive.” She even patted Killer B’s arm, trying to look confident. She was acutely aware that she stood on the brink of starting another war, and there was no way anyone would ever let her forget about it if she went the way of Sakumo. Sakumo wouldn’t mind – he probably would show her the best dumpster dives in town, except she’d have a hell of a time making him keep his clothes on all the time. “Is this the final resting place for Hyuuga-san?”

“Hyuuga-san with be interred elsewhere.” The Raikage’s scrutiny was uncomfortable. She felt a small ball of revulsion curling in the pit of her stomach as his gaze pinned her in place like a butterfly on a collector’s board. “I have medics on stand-by to see to your injury immediately. Karui, Darui, accompany her to the end of the hall and remain with her at all times. Killer B,” the Raikage pounded a heavy fist against his sturdy desk – the sturdy desk shook, “I demand an _immediate_ report of her injury and your delay.”

Tsume allowed herself to be shepherded out. Darui and Karui smelled nervous and seemed just as eager to get out as Tsume was glad to be removed from the nearly-overwhelming presence. She had newfound respect for Mooncalf for facing A and Killer B _together_ on the battlefield. Now she kinda understood how other people felt when Aunt Natsumi turned the full force of her temper and personality on them.

At the other end of the hall was another simple room that was four medics. They were fussy, as medics generally were, and Tsume’s condition gave them a great deal to fuss over.

oOoOoOo

A propped his head up with one arm and glared at Killer B. “What the hell happened?” There was definitely something more to Inuzuka Tsume than what met the eye, because he wasn’t the sort to look twice or give consideration to women, no matter how almost-masculine her face was or how scary her hair definitely seemed, up close. (He could’ve sworn he saw a small hooked knife in it, but maybe that was just a random lock of hair.) And now that the Konoha kunoichi was gone, the strange, soft tug of desire had disappeared, along with the unusual curiosity for what lay hidden beneath her ugly, smelly layers of clothes. He could feel the proverbial steam whistling out of his ears at the thought of the Hokage sending someone with a bloodline limit when A had explicitly forbade such.

A’s suspicions were only confirmed when he saw how his brother watched Tsume’s departure with something that was suspiciously _smitten._

Killer B rubbed the thick patch of stubble on his chin. “Well, a lot has happened in the last two weeks.”

“And why was it _two_ weeks and not _one_ as was originally anticipated?”

“That’s sort of what just happens when you leap off a cliff.” Killer B mirrored A as he sat down, resting his arm on the desk and propping his head up on his fist. “Best to start at the beginning. First, did you know that the Fourth Hokage has a son?”

_That_ was not what A had expected Killer B to lead with. “… Come again?”

“A son. I didn’t believe it at first, either, but Gyuuki said that the boy is clearly related directly to Namikaze Minato. Second, did you know that the Fourth Hokage’s son is the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki?”

“How the hell did we miss that?” A was going to have stern words with his Intel Department.

“Third, that boy is loved and doted upon by a wonderful mother.”

“I cannot believe that Inuzuka Tsume was _that_ loose-lipped.” Such was the only way that Killer B could come by such information, but A doubted that the Hokage would’ve sent someone who would openly blabber about Konoha’s apparently toddler-aged jinchuuriki.

Killer B shrugged, his face distant. A knew how much Killer B had wanted a doting parent as a child – or even just a _parent_ in general – especially after he became the Hachibi’s jinchuuriki when he was only six years old. “She didn’t have to. Inuzuka Tsume _is_ the mother, and she brought her two youngest along with her to Shikotan – which includes the jinchuuriki. _We_ recognized the boy for what he is. Oh, she’s not the biological mother – my understanding is that she fostered him the same way that she fostered Hatake Kakashi.”

Wait… the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki was currently in Lightning Country? A’s first thought was how ironically appropriate it seemed that a woman who was purportedly fearless would be the mother of such a creature. His second thought was how Kumo could finally get their hands on the Kyuubi, especially after their failure during the Second Shinobi War. “I take it that snatching the child won’t be easy.”

“Nope, nor would I support you in such a decision. When we left Shikotan, he was in the custody of some pretty strong Konoha nin, all from very prominent clans, and Tsume-san’s ninken. Oh, and Gyuuki sensed Jiraiya-san entering the village at the same time we were leaving it. But in all honestly, Gyuuki and I wouldn’t get between Tsume-san and her children if we were you. We saw what happened when enemies threatened Karui with only Tsume-san standing in defense, and Tsume-san only regards Karui a temporary teammate.” Killer B shuddered, and it wasn’t just for show. “Her sense of territory is _very_ strong.”

It was certainly ill-advised to go around snatching Inuzuka children, even after the clan joined Konoha – Inuzuka Natsumi’s reputation as a Hell Hound was first founded upon the tales of her cross-country rampage when slave traders grabbed some Inuzuka girls. Other clans’ children had also been snatched, and A always considered that any woman who managed to force Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama to work together with her on said rampage to rescue the children was not a woman to be taken lightly.

And Inuzuka Tsume _was_ the Hell Hound’s heir.

A growled. Damn that Sarutobi Hiruzen – what was the man thinking? A could feel the urge to go forth and snatch the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki like a kleptomanic itch crawling up his spine. To have _three_ jinchuuriki in his Village would be a mind-boggling amount of power. Of course, it would also make Konoha officially declare war, and no doubt it could muster up a number of allies who would do anything to make sure that Kumo didn’t keep such a concentration of power. Another insurance, no doubt, in case this peace treaty didn’t work out. Traps within traps. A didn’t like it. “How did Inuzuka-san get hurt, and where were _you_ when Karui was getting threatened by enemies?”

“Well, that’s a bit of a long story. In short, Inuzuka-san blocked a boulder.”

“She couldn’t dodge?” A’s disdain grew for this kunoichi as his respect, lousy as it already was, diminished.

“She was kinda hanging on the side of a cliff when it happened, so she didn’t have any room to maneuver.”

A decided that clinging to a cliff was a poor excuse for not dodging. “And _why_ was she hanging on the side of a cliff?”

“She deliberately jumped into the Great Gorge.”

A had the sneaking suspicion that Killer B was enjoying the way he dragged out the report, teasing with the dropped hints. At least Killer B wasn’t describing everything in haiku – that would just be ridiculous. “I knew her dossier said she had a reputation as a simpleton, but I had thought it was a smokescreen.” Only an idiot or someone who was desperately suicidal would deliberate jump into the Great Gorge, so clearly there was more truth about Inuzuka being a simpleton than he had originally suspected. Either that, or she basically signed up for what was a potential suicidal mission because… life wasn’t worth living?

Dragging children across the continent wasn’t the sort of thing a suicidal mother did, was it?

“She really a bit of a simpleton. Sort of.” Killer B thought for a moment. “I mean, she’s not an idiot, but she’s certainly simple. In the last two weeks, I’ve come to realize that Tsume-san is a little too literal and a little too awful at duplicity for her own good. Because of her memory, she has to stop and think hard on her duplicity – it’s like watching a child trying to be sneaky when they really aren’t. Very obvious, and you could see it coming across the Gorge on a cloudbank day. She came into this mission thinking that we’re allies together for the sake of this mission, and she truly believes such, and she literally follows through with what she believes. I can see why the Hokage picked her to be the envoy – she’s sticking to her mission protocol like a dog obsessively gnawing on a bone, even if she forgets personal and professional boundaries. Also, she babbles a lot when injured. Aside from that, she’s clearly someone the Hokage could trust to do the mission successfully without deviating from the parameters, like, oh, kidnap a random toddler.” Killer B never did like A’s choice for Head Jounin.

A had left the man in the position of Head Jounin for his _skills_ when A became Raikage, not for the oh-so-likeable personality.

“I’ll have you write up a report about her and her… talents and babblings for the dossier. You still haven’t told me the long version of how Inuzuka was clinging to the side of a cliff and where the boulder came from.”

Killer B ran a hand through his hair, looking sheepish as he leaned backwards in his chair. “Seven days ago, it was a cloudbank day on the Great Gorge when we were attacked by the Yozora clan.” A swore viciously, and Killer B nodded in agreement as his expression turned grim. “I know. I had to use Gyuuki. We were pinned to the trail, and there were eighteen of them. I told Tsume-san not to get involved – it wasn’t her fight. I told everyone to get ahead, but the trail had broken away, and you know how Karui gets with heights.”

“Petrified.” A leaned back in his chair and swore again, gaze flickering to the window as if he could see the gut-clenching drop from here.

“One of the Yozora snagged Karui, pulled her off the cliff, and then dropped her in mid-air. Remember though – Tsume-san _literally believes_ that we happen to be allies for this mission, so she immediately jumps off the cliff, yelling that she would get Karui. Tsume-san acted like she was off to fetch a frizzbee that went over the neighbor’s fence, not like they were at the mercy of freefalling a few kilometers.”

Okay, A was beginning to appreciate Inuzuka-san’s reputation for being impulsive and reckless, and why she had to be assigned with a team that was strong enough to pin her down. He wasn’t so sure that he’d dive off the Great Gorge for one of his own ninjas, let alone for an enemy with whom he had a very tentative truce.

…Okay, _definitely not_ for an enemy with whom he had a very tentative truce.

“Karui said that Tsume-san managed to rescue her about two-thirds of the way, and was looking downward to see how far they had left before reaching the bottom, when the boulder – which must’ve broken away when I was fighting – crashed into them. Tsume-san had tried blocking it – she shielded Karui – but lost her grip and they dropped the rest of the way down. Somehow, Tsume-san was still able to control the fall well enough to land them safely.” Killer B paused a moment, eyes becoming distant. “Darui said that the boulder pulverized everything in her hand, arm, shoulder, and a fair bit of her ribcage. Karui still hasn’t been able to tell me how Tsume-san managed to get them to the bottom. Tsume-san was in too much pain to remember, and Karui was too panicked. In truth, even though I saw both fall from the trail, and I saw both alive at the bottom, _I_ cannot believe that they somehow survived.”

A also couldn’t believe it. He knew how high the trail went, and just how far that drop was. He had been hoping that the clouds would’ve been clear that day so the Konoha kunoichi would be sufficiently intimidated by the heights, but apparently her reputation of being fearless was as well-earned as her reputation for being reckless.

To knowing and deliberately rescue an enemy sounded like something those notorious tree-huggers were likely to do, however… A begrudgingly admitted to himself that maybe there was something worthy of respect in this bizarre Konoha kunoichi. Kumo prided itself in being honorable, because it took honor to support each other and survive the harsh winters, and Konoha was generally considered to be almost as honorable – albeit softer and weaker due to an easier environment. You always knew where you stood with a Konoha nin – not like those duplicitous Kiri and Iwa assholes.

“Three Yozora found them, alone, at the bottom of the Gorge.”

A groaned and dropped his head flat against the surface of his desk. “Let me guess – despite every bone in her arm being broken, she still somehow managed to tear out their hearts one-handed and eat them for breakfast?” When the silence stretched awkwardly, he raised his head and gave Killer B an incredulous look. “ _She_ _did_?!”

“Er.” Killer B ran his hand through his hair again, looking sheepish once more. “Um. Well, she only tore out the heart of one, and then decapitated a second with her ax, and then I got there in time to finish off the third.”

No wonder Killer B seemed so smitten with Inuzuka. The woman doted on her jinchuuriki-son, rescued Killer B’s apprentice against impossible odds, stood tall against Kumo’s most timeless enemy, and was also brutally strong in a fight – she would have to be, to take on the Yozora one-handed and severely injured. “So. I gather she’s not scared of you in the least.” So much for _that_ far-fetched hope of his.

“She’s incapable of fear because of the brain injury.” Killer B shyly poked his index fingers against each other as his cheeks flared red. “She actually liked what she saw when she gazed upon Gyuuki.”

It _was_ a wet-dream come true. A pondered how to pry his brother away from this woman, especially after he had essentially made Killer B responsible for her. Was it too late to kill the Inuzuka and claim she died of frostbite? Nah. There was no way the Hokage would believe someone of Tsume’s stamina would die from frostbite. “That doesn’t explain why _I_ felt attracted to her when I saw her. Bloodline limit?”

Killer B was emphatic that it was anything but. “Darui thinks it may be a siren seal that she used against the Yozora clan to distract them – Karui told us that she didn’t notice anything different about Tsume-san. Hell, I don’t think I would’ve noticed anything if Karui hadn’t pointed out that we were looking at her differently.”

A tapped his fingers against the surface of his desk and contemplated the strange woman. “Did she charm you with the siren seal?” Such would explain the strange animal magnetism listed in her dossier.

“She can control the seal, since Darui is sure it wasn’t on before the fight. I suspect it got stuck on because of her injury.”

It was unheard of for a siren seal that could be switched on and off, but he supposed it wouldn’t be impossible. After the utter destruction of Uzushio, Kumo was the best Village when it came to fuuinjutsu, and Konoha was (a distant) third. A didn’t think that Konoha would be so cruel to burden one of its kunoichi with such, and then not include the ability to control it. There was a reason that A had outlawed applications of siren seals among his unwilling kunoichi. Seduction did and always would carry an important role in Intel, but A left that to the ones who were interested in pursuing such a career. The lure of the femme fatale would always call to some kunoichi, but he wasn’t going to make it mandatory the way that Kiri and Suna did. (He did, on the other hand, make it mandatory that all of his femme fatales had to meet required levels when it came to their fighting abilities, and he tested them yearly.)

“Anything else I should know about without having to wait for your written report?”

Killer B thought for a moment. “Two things. First, we found out who killed Karui’s father.”

“Remind me when and how he died.”

“Killed in action during the capture-the-Kyuubi mission in the Second World War – disemboweled with his spine ripped out.”

It was suddenly much easier to remember Izu, since the only thing memorable about the man had been his gruesome death. “Who killed him?”

“A twelve-year-old Inuzuka Tsume. Although she apparently had some help from Namikaze Minato.”

A felt he should be surprised, but he wasn’t. He had personally run away from Inuzuka Natsumi and her hell hound summons – he fully expected that the offspring and heir of the Hell Hounds faithfully followed in Natsumi’s footsteps – and had lived to talk about his battle with the Yellow Flash. “And how did Karui take this, assuming she learned at the same time you did?” At least now Karui could hold her head up high knowing that her father had been defeated by the Fourth Hokage. A knew that there were worse opponents you could lose your life to.

“Tsume-san was very apologetic, mainly because I just explained to her that saving Karui’s life made Karui her responsibility, and she insisted that she already owed Karui a life-debt, because apparently ripping out Izu’s spine was the first time that Tsume broke every bone in her right hand.”

A leaned back in his chair. He hadn’t considered the repercussions of Inuzuka-san saving Karui’s life until Killer B mentioned it. This could still be worked to Kumo’s advantage if Inuzuka-san was as truly a little too literal and a little too awful at duplicity as Killer B stated. “What’s the second thing I should know?”

“Tsume-san made it very clear that she was not allowed to seduce anyone – especially you.”

“That’s good.” A would’ve tossed this kunoichi out on her ear if she had tried. And why was his brother edging toward the door now? “I’m not going to like this next part, am I?”

Killer B sulked as he reached out and rested the palm of his hand on the doorknob. “I see nothing wrong with this next part – it will keep her busy and out of everyone’s hair with little to no risk of her gathering information. We both agreed it would be for the better.”

A growled and gripped his pen like it was a kunai.

Killer B straightened to his full height, glowering over the rims of his dark sunglasses. “And before you even ask, no, it has nothing to do with her siren seal.” He twisted the door knob and slipped through the door swiftly. He poked his head back in long enough to say, “We agreed to have sex later,” and then firmly shut the door as A’s pen quivered in the wood where Killer B’s head had previously been.


	34. Delta Years - Chapter Fourteen

“Okay, so how many does that make?” Anko sat on a trash can and lightly knocked her heels against its blood-splattered side as Hotaru rearranged her released kikaichu. The bugs reluctantly drew away from the still body that lay prone on the filthy alley floor.

“Eleven.” Hotaru sighed and swept loose hairs away from her face. “Hokage-sama was right – this is a plethora of missing nin city-wide. It’s been a very profitable trip, all things considering.” This latest missing nin wasn’t a target so much for the reward as he had been in cahoots with Orochimaru.

“I still hate it. This place stinks, it’s dirty, I want to go home, and I still can’t see why the ANBU can’t do this themselves.”

Hotaru squatted to roll the body onto the storage scroll. “Because they have more important things to do, and you need the experience in ambushing targets with your seal active without alerting the local populace. Now, La just informed me of another target in the village’s west section, getting friendly with a prostitute there. How do you think we should ambush him?”

oOoOoOo

“Do the voices!” Kiba yelled as he jumped up and down on the inn’s bed. The springs squeaked with every jump. Cat wondered if the people in the next room over ever questioned the racket they heard – probably not; rhythmically squeaking bed springs in such a questionable establishment usually indicated adult-level activities, not hyperactive toddlers.

“Voices!” Naruto agreed as he laughed and clapped his hands. He was on the floor beside Kuromaru with his back pressed against a warm flank. Kuromaru thumped his tail on the floor in ready agreement, clearly glad that _he_ wasn’t being asked to do the voices. “Frog-san’s voice is so cool! _Yours_ needs work.”

Cat sighed behind his clay mask, and rubbed the back of his head self-consciously with one hand. In his other hand was a colorful short story that Jiraiya had written about Namikaze Minato and his genin team, with the absolute assurance that it was family-friendly. (Hotaru had already double-checked it for accuracy and rating, and had given her approval for it being family friendly. As to its accuracy, she said, _“No, Minato was never scared of frogs, and no, sensei never rescued us from any killer salamander-crocodile monstrosity from the sewers of Pinko. He was too busy trying to run away from the civilian parkour champion trying to deliver pizza.”)_ “Now, you kids know that I can’t do voices. You should ask Wolf-sempai for that.”

Kiba threw his unopened package of crackers at the figure who had his back turned towards everyone, face buried in Jiraiya’s latest chapter. Cat knew that such particular work was _not_ family-friendly in the least. The crackers fell short of hitting the silver hair. Wolf didn’t even acknowledge the poor throw. “It’s your turn to do voices, Yamato,” he said in a low voice, not even looking up from the latest chapter of _Icha Icha Ecstasy._ His brother could be _such_ an embarrassment. Thank goodness that Wolf wasn’t reading the book in public, and Naruto and Kiba were too young to care.

“Stop breaking character, Captain.”

Kiba kept jumping on the bed. “Yeah, Kakashi. Stop breaking character.”

oOoOoOo

Tsume had the distinct feeling that the Raikage disliked her. Or loathed her. Maybe even despised her. She could smell his simmering ire from three rooms away, and knew it involved her. Well, she was used to inspiring dislike, loathing, and despicability in others – it didn’t come quite as easily or as often as disdain, irritation, and caution, but she considered herself a woman of many talents.

( _“Anytime you make your enemy react irrationally can be worked in your favor. And in this – like so many Inuzuka women before you – I expect you to have plenty of talent.”_

_“I think that’s a little harsh, Captain.”_

_“Shut up, you buffoon. You willingly bred with one, therefore your opinion of the Inuzuka women is questionable.”)_

But she wasn’t going to worry about the Raikage’s ire. There were more important things at hand, or close to her heart. “So, does it look like I’m going to survive, Doc?”

The head of the medic team, his bald head hidden beneath a handkerchief and gray-blue eyes were covered by amber-colored glasses, dabbed the sweat that gathered at his brow with the back of his sleeve-covered arm. “Oh, you’ll definitely live to survive _this_ stupid mistake.” Unlike his colleagues, Hekieki hadn’t been impressed with how Tsume earned her injuries. Tsume couldn’t tell if he was upset with healing a Konoha nin, or if he was always this angry and resentful with everyone. He snapped at and chewed out everyone who did something wrong, lackluster, half-heartedly, or too slowly. Which, so far, included everyone.

Karui was sulking over in the corner, doing her best to stay out of Hekieki’s way, and Darui smelled like he was rethinking his decision to stand at Tsume’s side and oversee the healing to ensure that no one took advantage of having Tsume’s life quite literally in their hands.

“Will I retain full use of everything?”

Hekieki curled his lip at that. “Would you even notice when you don’t even have half a brain?”

Tsume managed to check her immediate response of planting her too-large-and-smelly boot into Hekeiki’s ribs. The man hadn’t been anywhere near her brain. “I meant my arm.” Cousin Megumi could totally help Tsume learn how to fight one-armed. “I should be able to recover full function of it, right?”

Hekeiki gave her a look that reeked of disdain. “With as much traumatic damage as you’ve done to your nerves? Perhaps. But you’ll be feeling the pain for a long time to come. Just make sure that once this is healed, you get full rehabilitation and physical therapy for it.”

Fair enough. Getting the rehab and therapy would require Tsume to be kept in Konoha, which suited her just fine for more time with her newly increased family, and making sure that Danzo’s training was kept to a reasonable level.

The medics didn’t completely patch up Tsume – it felt like they only healed her half-way, figuring that it was probably better for everyone all around if she was out of any particularly dangerous zone, but not well enough to be a source of trouble. Healthy ninjas could cause a lot more damage, but Tsume knew that one couldn’t accurately calculate the desperation of a wounded shinobi.

When Hekeiki completed his work and dismissed Tsume and her two Kumo companions, Killer B was waiting just outside the door. “Now that you’re more stable, the Raikage requires that you come with me to the Tomb.” He held out the gigantic coat to her, so she shrugged it on and left the right sleeve dangling loose. He then secured Amatsu in its makeshift sling to her back.

“What’s the Tomb?”

Killer B’s words were abrupt. “Don’t ask.”

Oh – it was one of those topics. Okay. Tsume pressed her lips together and vowed to be on her very best behavior. She was aware of all the different scents and eyes that focused upon her as she, Darui, and Karui followed Killer B outside the building and onto one of the glorious sculpted ice bridges. This one spun and rose high in the air, crisscrossing Kumo until it finally ended at the iced-over face of one of the mountain peaks that surrounded Kumo. From what Tsume could tell, Kumo nestled in the V of a small valley, and the residents had tunneled through the surrounding peaks. The snow-covered man-made structures were sharp in angle, almost as if imitating the forms of the peaks, and deep snow filled in all available spaces.

She followed Killer B inside the small opening. The frame of the opening was a half-oval, outlined with what must’ve been intricately-carved weapons, long worn smooth from a usually-steady wind. Today, in the midst of the freshly-fallen snow and the frigid cold, the world was still. Tsume felt like she was stepping into a mausoleum, and felt justified in thinking so.

The darkness smelled of stale corpses and old death. Tsume boosted her vision slightly, just enough to make out rounded walls and ceiling overhead, also carved with intricate images of weapons and warriors. Here and there, she also saw vague images of multi-tailed beasts. She slowed when she saw a scene of a single human figure surrounded by nine multi-tailed beasts, but Karui prodded her rather painfully in her uninjured side.

“Keep moving, Inuzuka.”

Darui’s voice brought Tsume’s eyes back on her path faster than Karui’s words: “It’s none of your business.”

“Right. I’m sorry.” Tsume hurried to catch up to Killer B, who hadn’t slowed his wide stride or pace. “Right. No asking questions, no gathering Intel. I know my mission parameters.” Tsume mentally replayed the orders from the Hokage and Danzo’s stern directions. The hallway opened into a large cavern where dim torches cast weak light. In the muffled echo of their footsteps and the darkness that seemed to swallow everything up, somehow the Hokage’s orders crisscrossed with Danzo’s directions. She was fairly sure that the Hokage hadn’t told her to seduce the Hyuuga, especially on account of how badly the last time she tried to get on the down and low with a Hyuuga went. Her senses felt warped as she became acutely aware of the mountain’s untold weight bearing down on her head. She wanted to go back to sunshine and puppies.

“ _...ume…”_

Tsume glanced sharply to her left. The whisper – a distant call of her name – threaded across her senses once again. To the left, she saw wrapped, human-sized cocoons lined up against the wall. Karui prodded her in the back again, making Tsume realized that her steps had slowed once more. “Sorry. Thought I heard something.”

Karui was silent for a moment, and then said in a whisper that was swallowed up by the decay, “They say the dead speaks.”

“Who says?” Darui’s voice was amused.

“Well, _them_. The dead haunt us, don’t they?”

“The dead only haunts us if we allow them to, Karui. They’re fed by our imagination and guilt.”

Tsume did her best to go through life without guilt, and Aunt Natsumi always said she had a lively and active imagination, but didn’t think that she was haunted by the dead. If she were, she figured that there were a few people she wouldn’t mind hanging around – Kushina and Minato would be awesome ghosts, she figured. Grandmother Shinzou would be like the worst nightmare _ever_. Somehow, she’d make Poltergeist-Grandmother haunt Obito.

Something skittered in the dark, like multiple legs scraping lightly against stone.

Rats, Tsume’s nose told her. Her imagination gleefully conjured something different. Tsume had long decided that Karui and Darui weren’t so bad for being Kumo, so she was really glad they were at her back. This place reminded her too much of Orochimaru’s lair when she had stayed behind to help Yamato, and Danzo had remained to protect them from other escaped experiments.

In the distance, at the end of the large cavern, the wall opened into another small hallway. Killer B paused by this, looking back and waiting for his tardy companions. “Sorry,” Tsume said.

Killer B remained silent as he led them through the small hall. The walls here were smooth of any adornment. The hall ended at a small room where the Raikage stood with three other men on the other side of a dais, on which a raised wooden table stood.

The Raikage nodded to the table. “This will be the final resting place for Hyuuga-san. We respect him, Inuzuka-san, for protecting his daughter and for defeating a warrior, but respect doesn’t diminish the dishonor of your Village killing our diplomatic envoy.”

Tsume looked at the wooden table. The dark, cold surroundings seemed like such an awful place to leave the body of a Konoha shinobi. Theirs was a world of sun and trees, of blue sky and warmth. She had never given much thought of what would happen to her remains if she died – rarely gave thought to _dying_ in and of itself – but decided then and there that getting buried in a cave was not how she wanted to go.

_But if this is the price I would pay to keep Konoha safe, then it is a price I guess I would gladly pay._

Tsume dipped her hand down her shirt and searched around for the storage scroll that carried Hiashi’s twin. Darn thing must’ve shifted over… “What?” she asked defensively as the Raikage growled in irritation. “I tucked him safely on the left side and it’s not the most accessible place when you don’t have a right arm, okay?”

Karui prodded Tsume again – no doubt as a reminder to be respectful to the Raikage. She could smell Karui’s fear and the Raikage’s simmering rage. Well, she was every bit as respectful with the Raikage as she was the Hokage, so it just wouldn’t be right to be _more_ respectful, right?

_Please, stop thinking._

She mentally drop-kicked the Danzo-voice out of her mind as she finally found and removed what she was searching for. “There we go. Hyuuga-san, just as promised.” She felt a fleeting sense of shame when she saw that the storage scroll was smeared with her blood, dried and flaking, marring the otherwise pristine paper. _Sorry, Hyuuga-san._ She lightly placed the scroll on the table and gestured to the Raikage. “Could you unfold it so I can release the seal?”

Without hesitating, the Raikage stepped forward. His movements were crisp as he unfolded the scroll. Tsume couldn’t tell if he didn’t believe she’d booby-trap the scroll, or if he expected his guards to immediately dogpile her if he did trigger a trap. Once the scroll was unfolded and lay open before them, the Raikage stepped back once more.

Tsume made a hand-seal and concentrated a moment. She hoped that the old blood was enough to open the storage scroll aaaaaand… nope. It wasn’t. With a sigh, she reached back and nicked the tip of her left index finger on Amatsu’s edge, and then spread a line of fresh blood across the parchment. The seals on the parchment glowed for a moment as Tsume released the storage, and the body of Hyuuga Hizashi puffed into place. His skin had an ashen pallor – pronounced even more with death – and he wore his brother’s robes. The seal on his forehead was hidden beneath the Konoha forehead protector.

On a whim, Tsume reached out to one of the limp hands and gave it a squeeze. It was as cold as the cavern. “Good partings to you.” They hadn’t been friends, much less acquaintances, in life, but Hizashi was Konoha, and that was good enough for Tsume. Konoha was her territory – she would live and die by it, and so she would live and die by everything and everyone within Konoha’s boundaries.

She barred her teeth and snarled at the Raikage as he stepped close. “A moment, _sir._ ”

The Raikage’s eyes narrowed. Tsume felt his killing spirit like a smothering weight – greater than the mountain above. She held his gaze long enough so that when she turned away, it was a clear indication that she turned away of her own choosing, not because she felt intimidated. She turned her eyes back to Hizashi. She pushed his hair back away from his face – it looked as stern in death as his twin brother’s was in life. Hizashi had a young son, Tsume remembered distantly, a son whose mother had died in childbirth six months ago, along with a stillborn daughter.

“Thank you,” she told Hizashi sincerely, playing with a lock of his hair for a moment. It was as soft and as silky as she suspected. “Thank you for all that you’ve done for your Village.” _This is a rotten way to pay back your loyalty,_ she thought to herself. She tried to imagine, if she were Hizashi’s son, what would she want to know about her father’s last moments? What words and descriptions would make that unknown son’s heart swell with pride? “You were a fine shinobi, and an even finer father. You did what you could to protect your young. And I swear, upon my mother’s heart, that I will make sure your child grows up, knowing that you brought no shame upon your family – no matter what this butthead here might say otherwise,” she added, untangling her fingers from Hizashi’s hair long enough to jab one toward the Raikage. He growled at her, but she ignored him.

“Huuyga-san,” she sang her Clan’s prayer for their dead, “we shall speak your name in the sun and the wind, and your memory will live on, with every generation that follows.” She was off-tune, again. Oh well. She was Clan Leader because of her herding and territorial instincts, not her singing talents. She took a deep breath, committing Hizashi’s scent to memory, and turned back to the Raikage. “He’s yours now.” Then she stepped away and turned to Killer B. “I don’t want to remain here. Please let me go.” She huddled in the heavy coat as a chill invaded her bones.

“Go.” The Raikage’s voice seemed loud and dismissive in the dim light. “Keep her out of trouble, Killer B.”

“Yes, brother.”

Killer B looped an arm around Tsume’s hips and steered her from the Tomb. It would’ve been more diplomatic to place his arm around her shoulders but that wasn’t practical given the extent of her injuries even after the medics saw to her. His hands were firm and were probably warm, but a shiver seized Tsume’s muscles. Her right arm ached and burned as they stepped out of the Tomb and entered daylight – bright from all the light reflecting from the stark white. A fresh world; a new world, just waiting to live, with life asleep beneath the deep layers of snow and earth. Tsume felt her eyes sting from more than just the bright light. The air was harsh against her throat as she drew in a deep breath. 

“How does a bath sound?” Killer B asked.

Tsume swiped quickly at her stinging eyes. She was still acutely aware of how badly she smelled. As she fussed with the green and yellow yarn tassels on her scarf, Tsume wondered if some of her stench permeated the storage scroll. A quick covert sniff back to the Tomb (easily explained away with her damp eyes) confirmed that she was just being irrational. “Sounds like a good plan.”

Besides, the sooner and further away from the Raikage she was when they discovered the seal on Hizashi’s forehead, the better.

oOoOoOo

Darui lost his apartment to Killer B in a decisive battle of rock-paper-scissors.

“Huh. Knew I should’ve gone with paper.” Darui and Karui both looked mournfully at his scissors as Killer B radiated smug triumph beside them, his arms crossed before his broad chest. Tsume admired the elegant swan with its spread wings majestically poised over her head, and tried not to be obvious about overhearing her companions.

“I challenge you, sensei!”

“No.”

Tsume peeked around the tail feathers to see Karui sulking and kicking at a bit of snow that covered the ice-bridge. “But I don’t want to go back home. _She’s_ still there.”

Tsume focused momentarily on the house most marked with Karui’s scent – there was a lurking creature there that turned and hissed when Tsume smelled what was going on. And she could have sworn that there was also a lashing tail and ears pinned back. Well, _that_ was odd. She wasn’t used to things being aware when she sniffed them out, much less getting the impression of their general shape.

“Nii shall dote on you endlessly once you tell her how you got dropped off the Great Gorge.”

Karui kicked at the snow again, face falling into a pout. “But I don’t wanna be smothered, especially when she’s going to want to know how I survived.” She gave Tsume a sideways glare of resentment.

Darui looped an arm over Karui’s shoulders and pulled her along. “But think of how grateful your teammates would be once you rescue them from Nii’s clutches.” As they veered away the forked path of the ice bridge that spiraled down in an elaborate staircase, Darui tossed something over his shoulder. Killer B caught it with one hand –it was a set of keys that jangled as he stuffed them in his pocket. “Come.” He placed one hand against the middle of Tsume’s back and applied gentle pressure. “Darui will definitely have more clean towels than I would.”

oOoOoOo

Darui’s home was a clean, slightly stale from his prolonged absence, and cold apartment dressed up in beige colors. Tsume watched as Killer B made his way through it, restarting the faded heating seals, and also releasing the few simple traps that Darui placed. “The water shouldn’t be frozen,” he told Tsume over his shoulder, “the building manager makes sure that the pipes remain in working condition all year round.”

Tsume figured that the building manager probably didn’t want to deal with pissed-off shinobi who just came home from a death-defying mission only to discover that the pipes had frozen and burst open. “Wise man,” she said.

“Would you like some help?” Killer B gestured to her arm.

“I should be able to handle the sling by myself. I’ll need help scrubbing my back – and you stink too, so you should join me.”

“After I get this place warmed up and ready. I’m going to get some food started too, because I’m hungry.”

Tsume was glad that Killer B didn’t hover as she made her way to the bathroom. It was traditional-styled, which meant she had to wait to fill the tub with hot water as she scrubbed herself down. While the water was running, Tsume rustled up a few buckets and found the soap. She shivered in the cool air as she carefully stripped her dirty clothes off and threw them into a separate bucket with hot water and soap to work some of the crud soaked loose. Darui had originally assisted her in cleaning the blood off her skin and from under her nails after the fight, but little could be done at the time about her clothes.

Tsume carefully looped her scarf over a hook that hung from the nail. Then she nudged her hair. “Hide in the scarf until I’m done with the bath. I’m going to scrub all this filth off, and I don’t want any of you to get washed down the drain.” She felt a crawling sensation in her scalp as the kikaichu obeyed. One by one, they jumped from her hairline to the scarf. After the kikaichu had settled down, Tsume finished stripping off her clothes and set about washing herself one-handed. It took several buckets and a lot of soap before she felt clean. Her hair squeaked as she wrung water out of it. By the time Tsume was ready to slip into the now-filled tub, Killer B politely knocked and then entered the room.

“Still want your back scrubbed?”

He smelled nervous, as if half-expecting her to change her mind. Tsume kept her back turned towards him as she offered the sponge over her shoulder. “Sure.” His hands were gentle as he rubbed her back. Wide sweeping strokes in the areas that hurt the least had tension leaving her body as she turned to limp putty in his hands.

“Hmmm. Where’ve you been all my life?”

“Way up north.” Killer B carefully rinsed her off.

“Need me to get your back?”

He chuckled. “I think you’re better off getting into the tub before you fall over on me.”

The tub looked rather inviting, all things considering. Tsume slipped into the steaming water with a happy little sigh. She leaned against the far edge of the tub, draping her right arm with a clunk over the edge where water wouldn’t reach the plaster, and rested her chin beside it. She closed her eyes and increased the chakra at her nose as Killer B scrubbed himself. She concentrated on her surroundings, taking note of who and what was present. As Killer B slid into the water beside her, smelling infinitely better than when they first arrived at Kumo, Tsume increased her olfaction even more.

Across the wide, mostly-empty, cold expanse of the north, it was easy to find Shikotan. It was harder to find Naruto now that Jiraiya had tweaked the seal, nor was it easy to find the others amidst the putrid stench – there was blood, though, lots of fresh blood and the rank odor of fear that thankfully didn’t belong to any of her teammates. Tsume opened her eyes and stared at the bathroom wall. She didn’t dare go to her maximum level with her current level of injury.

“What are you thinking?” Killer B’s voice was a soft purr as she felt a hand stroking her shoulders.

“Nothing much.” _(“Simpleton Tsume…” “I’d ask what you’re thinking, but that would require you to have a valid thought in the first place…” “That’s the problem – you **don’t** think!”)_ “I’m just sitting here, wondering what my children are doing.” Hana and Kabuto would be on winter break, working with the puppies under Yukina and Oyubi’s guidance. It was about time for them to choose their partners – later in life than was traditional to be assigned partners, but Tsume hadn’t had the ninken to spare until now. Tsume wasn’t going to let herself worry about Naruto and Kiba – not yet, anyway. Not until she was more healed and closer to Shikotan.

“Tired?”

Tsume took note of her current level of energy. She felt drained, especially after handing over the body of her fellow Konoha nin, and really didn’t feel up to having sex right now. She felt unduly grateful that Killer B was offering her a temporary out. “Yes. I think I should get some rest first.”

Killer B slid one hand up her left arm, and planted a kiss against the crook of her neck. “Understood.” Tsume turned to face him, and struggled to keep her face relaxed and neutral –something _otherly_ flashed behind Killer B’s uncovered eyes, and she felt like she was being scrutinized by something vast, ancient and _hungry_. It seemed to swell as she leaned forward and pressed a dry kiss against the tip of Killer B’s freshly-shaved chin. “It will be _much_ better when I’m rested,” she whispered as a thrill raced up and down her spine. She wanted to be the sole focus of that other presence.

“Undoubtedly.”

oOoOoOo

The pallet smelled of Darui and wasn’t too comfortable, but it had six blankets, which was sufficient in keeping Tsume nice and toasty through the night. Killer B, resting on a pallet that he had pushed up beside hers, only had one small blanket. He wasn’t cold or asleep, but Tsume still felt like she was being watched by something very large and very hungry. It had to be the Hachibi. After she wriggled around to find a comfortable spot where her right arm and shoulder didn’t ache as much (no pillow for her knees, no extra pillows for her head, none for her ankles – man, she hated roughing it), she reached out and touched the exposed skin on Killer B’s neck with her right hand. He immediately turned to face her.

In the darkness, Killer B’s eyes were shadowed, but Tsume still thought she saw the great tailed beast lurking just beyond, watching her with an intensity that she had never felt before. She wanted to reach out and touch the Hachibi, to pry its mind open and see what made it tick. If she could understand just a little about the eight-tailed beast, maybe she could gain a better understanding of the nine-tailed beast.

“I think you’re remarkable,” Tsume told Killer B.

He raised his eyebrows at that. “I wasn’t expecting to be told that. ‘Remarkable’ isn’t a word often associated with me.”

She clumsily traced his jaw in the dark. The hinged arm brace that Hekieki had stuck her was light and flexible, but also made her more prone at bumping her arm against things because of its swing. “You and the Hachibi don’t seem to be in conflict.” She didn’t think that Kushina and the Kyuubi had been as close – Tsume had never seen or sensed anything _otherly_ about Kushina. At least not that she could remember, which left Kushina with a lot of latitude to be _otherly_. “And you actually seem peaceful with the Hachibi. It’s so remarkable to me.”

Killer B propped himself up on one arm. The blanket fell back to reveal etched muscles wrapping a strong torso. Tsume fought down the urge to see if that six-pack was as hard as it looked. “You realize that now you know my secret, I have to kill you.”

Since Tsume couldn’t smell any threat or danger, she gave into her urge. Yup, the muscles were as hard as she thought. His abdomen twitched beneath her questing hand. “We’re talking the little death, right? How do you two get along so well?”

He touched a spike of her still-damp hair, twirling and twisting it around his index finger. His eyes became shadowed for a moment with something that looked like regret. “Your son is the jinchuuriki for the nine-tails.”

Tsume froze, and then she carefully pulled her arm back as her mind worked frantically. The Hokage had _warned_ her about this. She felt the pit of her stomach drop as she imagined little Naruto chained and dragged across the countryside with nine Kumo nin, and then she vowed that she would kill anyone who got between her and _her_ child. _Never again will I abandon Kushina’s son. He’s mine now. Mine mine **mine**. _“Did I say something when I was hurting really badly?” Her foot-to-mouth filter always seemed to disappear when she was injured but felt safe, and she felt very safe in Killer B’s company.

“You’re becoming angry. Please don’t be angry.” He attempted to smooth down her wild hair. “I only know because like recognizes like – although Naruto probably didn’t know why we seem so alike. It’s just that he has something that I always wished I had – a loving mother. I won’t allow the Raikage to take that away from him.” He grinned to lighten the mood, but Tsume thought she saw a flash of fangs momentarily superimposed over his.

If Killer B had no desire to pry Naruto and Tsume apart, and he had given his word that he wouldn’t allow the Raikage to separate the two, then that meant that it was best to capture mother _and_ son. Which meant that she would likely never be allowed to leave Kumo. Huh. This particular scenario had never occurred to her or the Hokage.

To distract Killer B from her suspicions, Tsume reached out to his abdomen again and stroked it lightly. “You didn’t have a loving mother?”

“I was an orphan when I was chosen. I had no one.”

What a lonely, unloving life. Tsume sensed a world of loss and pain lurking beneath Killer B’s words. _That could’ve been Naruto._ She dropped her hand lower, and felt bold as her questing fingers stroked his length. She felt it engorge more at her deft touch. “No child should feel abandoned.” Even though Shinzou had been unnecessarily cruel, Tsume had still found refuge and love with Hidarime, Shinchuu, Aunt Natsumi, Oyubi, and a variety of cousins.

“This hardly seems to be a conversation if you’re feeling well-rested for other activities.” Killer B leaned forward to kiss a trail from Tsume’s hairline to the line of her jaw, and then back to her lips. His mouth felt hot against her skin, and she felt the other presence loom over her like a rolling fog. He carefully kept his weight off her injured side.

“Fair enough.” Besides, she wanted to see if the Hachibi’s presence would make itself a little more known if Killer B’s barriers dropped during sex or orgasm.

Killer B pushed the covers away from Tsume. The air was cold but not frigid as it caressed her bare skin, tightening nipples and making the hair on her arms stand on end. His hand was deliciously warm as he traced one breast, thumb flicking against her nipple. “How do we want to do this?” he asked between kisses. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

It seemed like it was the first time anyone had ever told Tsume that. She felt her eyes sting for just a moment before she pushed the emotions down. Her mind flitted to several different positions, but she rejected most of them on the basis of requiring more flexibility than what her arm could afford her. “Lay down and let me be on top.” That would keep the pressure off her limb and torso.

He grinned. “So, you feel up to riding me again, do you?” The presence of the Hachibi, lurking just beneath the surface – it reminded Tsume uncomfortably of the void that always seemed to follow at her footsteps, just waiting for a chance to slither beneath her – gave her a heady, bold buzz. The thought of mounting Killer B as the Hachibi’s lightening chakra flickered across her skin sent a bolt of pleasure through her body.

She sat upright so she could push against his chest with her left hand. “Of course. I have a horse named Juubi, so I’m quite experienced with powerful beasts between my knees.”

“He’s real?” Killer B allowed himself to be pushed down. “I thought the Bingo Entry was a joke.” Tsume slid a bare leg over his as she shoved more of the covers back. Stupid things felt like they were trying to smother her.

“He terrorizes Konoha. Even Sakumo is kind of wary of Juubi, and Danzo really doesn’t like Juubi.” Tsume kept the fact that Danzo didn’t like anyone who wasn’t the Hokage, Sakumo, or Kagami to herself as she wiggled around until she was seated across Killer B’s pelvis. His erection felt hot against her cool skin. Killer B ran his hands along her torso, fingers skimming against the scar on her lower abdomen, before he reached up and kneaded both breasts carefully. There was a smattering of blue and purple bruising present on her left breast and side, but it didn’t hurt when he touched. Contact with her breasts stopped feeling sexual and no longer excited Tsume as it once did after breastfeeding two children, but men always seemed to enjoy looking and feeling, and the smell of their arousal did more for her desire than the touching ever did.

Tsume braced her left hand on the mat beside Killer B’s head and undulated her hips against his. She loved the way his expression changed and how he placed his hands on her hips, enjoying the languid movement and the curling pull of arousal in her pelvis. “I could do this all night,” she whispered as she leaned forward and nipped his jaw.

“I wish you would.” He slipped a hand between them to fondle her, fingers seeking and sliding. Tsume shifted her hips forward, and then mounted Killer B fully. He was comfortably wide and she was wet enough to enjoy the friction as she tossed her head back and grinned. Killer B’s breath hitched at that – she felt his chakra flare and the simmering presence of the Hachibi spike. She watched his face carefully as he closed his eyes and let his head fall backwards. The two chakras flexed and mingled, one cresting as the other rose.

The only sound for several long moments was skin slapping against slick skin as Tsume leaned forward and braced herself. Killer B gripped her hips and moved his with more power. She felt her eyes roll back as the shifted angle let him hit that sweet spot. Heat swept through her body, momentarily pushing the pain back. His eyes flew open as she nipped his jaw, and she gasped.

The pupils weren’t round.

She dropped her left arm, shifting her weight from her hand to her elbow so she could run her fingers through his hair. It was damp from their earlier bath and now from sweat, which was starting to bead at his forehead. Killer B wasn’t the only one watching her as she dragged her fingers over his brow, the bridge of his nose, and then traced his lips. As she followed through with an opened-mouth kiss, she tightened her vaginal muscles and tilted her pelvis.

Killer B surged against her, almost sitting upright as he dug his nails into her skin. Power coursed around her, the smell of _demon_ flooding her nose as ying and yang chakra flared. She felt her seal burning beneath her toenail, and was momentarily distracted as she forced it down, struggling to keep it from blooming open and ripping more chakra from her to feed its own dark strength. Killer B’s growl was inhuman as his hands dropped away from her hips to grasp her buttocks, squeezing and pinching.

The change in position made fresh waves of pain wash through Tsume’s body – pleasure doused like a fire beneath a downpour of rain. Determined that at least one person/creature/hybrid would have fun, Tsume squeezed her muscles again and watched as the curving eyes focused on her. She kissed Killer B again, the cloying stench of sexual arousal and the Hachibi nearly blocking all other scents, but he still tasted human. She pressed her left hand against his chest and felt the vibration of his heart beneath her fingertips.

Killer B’s movements took on a sense of urgency. She smelled the spike of his pheromones as his arousal reached for its peak. She pulled her mouth away from his so she could press her face against his shoulder, teeth scraping his skin. She wondered if she was the only one who saw the eight-tailed demon in sex, or if Killer B just didn’t have sex with anyone _because_ it wasn’t a rare occurrence. The grip on her buttocks tightened painfully as he came with a harsh grunt that almost sounded like he was uttering a name, hips jerking against her own.

Tsume braced her upper body with her left hand as Killer B collapsed backwards. The cool air made the hair on her body prickle, so she carefully laid down beside him and pulled all of her covers over her body. Killer B rolled into his side so he could brush some of Tsume’s wild locks off her face. “Did I hurt you? It’s not usually over that fast for me.”

“I’m fine.” He looked downcast anyway, so Tsume shoved a foot from under her blanket so she could slide it up his leg. “Well, you know, now we _have_ to do this again, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.” The coarse hairs that covered his skin made her foot itch, so she rubbed it against him for a satisfying scratch. “I take it that sneaking out of Kumo so we could meet up and have a secret torrid affair will be out of the question.”

Killer B grinned. “Unlikely to happen. You’ll just have to become some sort of diplomatic envoy more often.”

“I think that Konoha and Kumo would catch on sooner or later if your Head Jounin kept going around kidnapping innocent little toddlers. It’ll get to the point where you’ll have parents up in arms every time anyone from Kumo was in the general vicinity.”

“That could get awkward, yes.”

They continued to talk about meaningless things, voices growing softer as sleep stole over them, faster for Killer B than for Tsume.

Just before she drifted off, Tsume allowed herself to wonder why Killer B had called her firefly.

oOoOoOo

That morning, before Killer B awoke, Tsume finally managed to completely mute her seal. She hoped that Killer B wouldn’t notice anything too different, maybe chalk it up as a side effect of sleeping with her, but it was an incredible relief to finally silence the damn thing. The mornings after were usually let-downs after you realized what the person looked like in the harsh brightness of daylight-tinged reasoning. She shoved off the blankets and padded softly to the bathroom, shivering in the cool air. She managed to find her clothes, still slightly damp after Killer B washed them, but dressed in them anyway after cleaning between her legs. She was gratified to smell clean with clothes that only had a few stubborn bloodstains remaining.

She couldn’t secure Minato’s forehead protector to her arm as she preferred, so she knotted the ends with her teeth and left fingers so she could loop it around her neck like a lasso. She figured she could kick anyone who might take advantage of it and strangle her. Once her morning ablutions were completed, she made her way into the kitchen. Killer B was awake and stirring as she poked around Darui’s supplies.

The more she thought of it, the more she realized that she was probably in tremendous trouble. Technically speaking, Killer B had probably saved Tsume’s life by keeping her sheltered and tended to after her extensive injuries. In the morning light, where the void seemed the furthest from her, Tsume felt slightly ridiculous for thinking that everything pointed to the very strong possibility that she and Naruto would be _kept_ , but so far the only thing that had gone right with her mission was the successful delivery of Hyuuga-san.

As far-fetched as the suspicion seemed, Tsume knew that she couldn’t just ignore it.

_What would Danzo do?_ Well, that was always a simple formula to go by. Make sure to sneak away with the least amount of fuss and notice, and then not get caught. Danzo was all about subtlety – warfare that combined stealth, finesse, and manipulation over flashy and powerful. Finesse was something that Tsume was notoriously lacking in, and she couldn’t even make up for the lack of such with flashy and/or powerful techniques. If she did try sneaking away, Tsume knew that there was no way she’d be able to survive the trek through the cold and the snow without needed supplies, so she’d have to steal those and storage scrolls to seal items safely.

Theft didn’t exactly fall under the list of things that would make this mission a failure, but it also required Tsume to go looking for such scrolls, which could easily be misconstrued as looking for Intel. That was definitely on the list of no-no’s that Tsume had been forced to memorize. 

Maybe being subtle and sneaking out wasn’t the way to escape. The more Tsume tried to think of doing what other people would do, it failed to include the fact that other people were limited by their fears. The only thing that Tsume was limited by was the need not to start a war that the Hokage had explicitly ordered her _not_ to start. So it was probably best to play out events by ear. The likelihood of being kept by Kumo was probably just a symptom that she was obsessing too much over inconsequential statements, like building a Hokage monument out of a child’s pile of sand.

After all, there were a lot of people in Konoha who didn’t like Tsume, so why did she find it necessary to think that a hostile village would want her way more than her own village?

Besides, Tsume knew that nothing short of death would keep her away from her children and her Village. After all, Amatsu wasn’t the only deadly weapon that Aunt Natsumi had given to her. If it came down to it, Tsume was prepared to unleash hell, and no one – not even Kumo – could stand against such an assault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first wrote the sex scene between Killer B and Tsume, it struck me how this is probably the healthiest sexual relationship Tsume has in her entire life. It's kinda sad, but on the other hand, it's also kinda sweet, because Killer B is a decent sort of fellow.


	35. Delta Years - Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing really happens the next three chapters as far as action goes. It's mainly character-driven, exploring the consequences of Tsume's choices, her adopted sons, and Kumo's culture a little more.

A considered the blank sheet of paper that sat in front of him, edges curling slightly, mocking him with the missing message that he had yet to compose. “Damn you,” he told the paper. If he could challenge it to an arm-wrestling contest, he’d win, but the paper had no arms, and therefore it was pointless to challenge it.

The first letter he considered writing to the Hokage – _you sneaky jerk-ass, your Konoha kunoichi went and got into trouble just as you knew she would, therefore Kumo refuses to accept responsibility for her current condition –_ was out of the question, but was also the only thing that kept springing to mind. Deciding that something so delicate was best written when calm, A opened a desk drawer where his current cross stitch pattern was stored, along with his readers. The pattern was a sappy thing where a dove was tying two hearts together with a white ribbon. It was a wedding gift he was planning to present to one of his Academy teachers this coming spring, and he was behind schedule. The stitches were finer than normal, and the winter light was poor, requiring the use of his best readers to prevent unnecessary eye strain. 

As he was repositioning the hoop, his office door swung open and a chuunin poked her head through. “Your brother’s here to see you, and brought the Konoha kunoichi as you requested.”

A didn’t bother putting away his cross stitch. “Thank you. Send them in.” He had expected them to be later, given how interested Killer B seemed in rolling around in the sheets with this Konoha kunoichi, but he hoped that Inuzuka-san was professional enough not to delay a summons in favor of morning sex.

He was threading silk when Killer B and Inuzuka entered the room. Inuzuka looked like she had gone through another round of healing, since the visible bruising on her neck appeared to be diminished compared to yesterday. He eyed her over the rim of his glasses for a moment – the strange tug of desire was completely gone. Good; she must’ve turned off that infernal seal. But there was also the distant, hazy odor of musk between the two of them. Damn it. “I trust that you _slept_ well last night?”

“And this morning too, thanks. Er, I feel quite rested, thank you.” There was an odd shift in her expression, as if she were trying to hide unflattering thoughts. A suspected it had something to do with his cross stitch. He refused to feel embarrassed in any way, and made a show in completing the thread-through. Blasted little holes… Okay, maybe it was also his readers. He was secure enough in his masculinity not to be bothered by the coral-pink frames, or the fake jewels in the corners. Everyone should have a little bit of whimsical sparkle with their accessories, and rhinestones on his kunai was simply impractical.

“You have left me in a bit of a conundrum.” There wasn’t any reason he couldn’t just lay the burden of blame at this woman’s feet, as it was her fault for being reckless and fearless and far too cozy with his Kumo nin. _Poor sense of personal boundaries,_ he decided to add to her dossier. “How do you propose I explain to your Hokage _why_ you are delayed and must stay for further recovery at Kumogakure?”

Inuzuka-san’s expression morphed into something odd as she regarded him with suspicious resentment. “How much longer am I expected to stay?”

Ah, someone was worried about being _kept_. It was not an unfounded suspicion, even given her status as a diplomatic envoy, but A had decided that it was best for Kumo’s health (and his own mental well-being) to keep Inuzuka Tsume and Killer B as far apart as possible, and Inuzuka-san _far_ away from Kumo in general. “Until my competent medics have declared that you’re well enough to make the journey back to Shikotan without making things worse. I’m not a medic, so I must concede to those who have greater experience and knowledge in such matters.” Just as he expected his ninja to concede to how he ruled Kumo. Everyone had their own role to play, and he played his very well.

A continued to study Inuzuka-san in between stitches as she mulled over his words. Then another shifty look crossed her face – Killer B was right, a person could see this kunoichi trying to be deceptive from the other side of the Great Gorge. It was gratifying to realize that she never intentionally meant for her rescue of Karui to be anything more than that. “So, if I’m better in three days’ time, I’ll be gone in three days. Will I have a new team accompanying me, or will it be the same people?”

A peered over the rims of his readers again, once more considering her. She squired, like an unruly child, under the weight of his gaze. “The rest of Killer B’s team are well enough to join Karui and Killer B, so Darui will be replaced by two chuunin.” If Inuzuka-san had been willing to risk everything to save a random young teenager, then A felt comfortable in surrounding her with them. It would probably get Inuzuka-san into more trouble, since teenagers were drawn to such like magnets to iron, but A wasn’t above manipulative tactics.

Learning that she was going to be surrounded by teenagers seemed to throw Inuzuka-san for a loop. “Oh. I like Karui. It would be nice to see her again.” Inuzuka-san’s eyes flickered from A to Killer B and back. Then she raised her chin stubbornly and said, “I just don’t want to be separated much longer from my children.” A hint of growl – the same sort of growl that had been in her voice when she wanted to say goodbye to Hyuuga – layered her words, almost like the rumble beneath foot before one looked up in time to see the avalanche bearing down. “I don’t like _anything_ getting between me and mine.”

Ah yes. But what sort of woman would willingly drag her precious sons – jinchuuriki and otherwise – all over the continent? Okay, so it was standard for the Inuzuka women and their daughters back in the day, and maybe Inuzuka-san was a traditionalist. A found himself comforted with the idea that she was unlikely to pull something incredibly stupid (like kidnapping a clan heir, that asshole) when her children were in the same country, awaiting her return.

Inuzuka-san didn’t quite strike him as a woman who would randomly grab children on a whim, anyway. Not without good reason, at least, like maternal instincts combined with animalistic instincts gone wild. He felt like he was getting a good reading on her personality.

This could still be to his advantage. “You are an honorable woman, Inuzuka-san. We of Kumo regard honor to be something valuable, hard-earned and yet so easily lost. I feel that you, as a Konoha kunoichi, would understand this.”

Konoha nin generally had different standards for their honor, dependent on different clans and traditions – Kumo didn’t have populations nearly as divided, since it started out with similar clans that already intermarried and mingled often enough band together to survive the harsh winters and the brutal, insular Yozora.

Inuzuka eyed him suspiciously. “Of course I understand honor.”

“And you believe in it, as well.”

“Yes!”

“Good. Because I simply can’t change tradition even when a Konoha kunoichi saves the life of one of our own. I’m sure you appreciate the importance of tradition. Karui is still your responsibility, but you understand that I’m in a difficult situation – I can’t very well _give_ her to you for training and mentoring as our tradition dictates, so I must take some creative steps.”

She tensed at that announcement, eyes narrowing as her gaze focused sharply. Her torso curled forward, as if gathering strength and energy to do something dangerous, and her killing intent boiled to the surface. It was fascinating to watch her morph from oblivious hedgehog to cornered wolf. It struck A just how similar Inuzuka Tsume appeared just now to Shinzou’s Bingo Book picture – it was just a glimpse, but he saw the predator who had been a deadly legend with a career that spanned three-quarters of a century. He briefly wondered what Tsume would’ve been like if the brain injury had never happened. Beside her, Killer B took a step back, bracing himself to block a potential attack.

Pretending to not notice the change in Inuzuka, A pulled a Kumo forehead protector from beneath a stack of paperwork and shoved it across the desk to her. “It’s unprecedented, but I am officially making you an honorary Kumo kunoichi.”

Surprised flashed across her features. Her left hand twitched, and A saw the glimmer of chakra gathering around her claws. _(“…She only tore out the heart of the first.”)_ If she made any move towards him, he’d immediately flip the desk up to serve as a shield – it would no doubt splinter into firewood with one strike, but it would buy him enough time to immediately go on the offensive. He and Killer B should be enough to disarm and subdue an injured, one-armed special jounin kunoichi, with or without her siren seal activated.

“I know that your loyalty will always be to Konoha,” A continued. “I don’t expect it to ever change, nor would I want it to.” He was fairly sure that Kumo was better off without the Inuzuka clan mucking around with things anyway. “However, I have to think about _my_ nin, of that little chuunin whose life is now in your hands, and how I can make her grow as a person and as a kunoichi. She won’t always stay in Kumo – there will be missions that will take her from Lightning, even as far as Fire. I realize that there’s always that chance you two will meet again, and I want you two to be well-met when that happens. I leave Karui to your responsibility when she’s in Fire or elsewhere the two of you shall meet, and I expect the two of you to meet as honorable Kumo comrades, even when you’re still Konoha’s kunoichi.”

The killing intent dissipated, leaving Inuzuka-san confused and embarrassed. “I… uh, okay, this makes me distinctly uncomfortable.”

Which was exactly what A had intended, but he was much better at hiding his intentions than she was. “Oh? Do you regret saving Karui’s life?”

“No!”

“Do you feel _burdened_ with being responsible for your actions?”

“I, uh… nooooo?”

“And if you met Karui in an inoffensive situation, would you attempt to kill her?”

Inuzuka’s eyes were wide as she dragged a foot across his floor. “I don’t… think so?”

“In saving Karui’s life, you have placed a great burden on this young woman’s shoulders – she must carry the knowledge that the murderer of her father is also her savior, and is also the enemy of her Hidden Village. I feel that this is the most reasonable way to ease that burden, since I have no intention of _keeping_ you or trying to start a war with Konoha.” It also gave Kumo a boon – a back door into Konoha without requiring a mole, and little to no risk of breaking treaties.

It was a simple little play: emotionally manipulate the simpleton, prey upon her emotional vulnerability and beliefs, and _never_ _threaten the heart of her loyalties_. Against a more intelligent opponent, like her legendary son, A knew there would be no success for such a play, but Inuzuka-san had already proven that her weakness was her own maternal instincts. Such would be the death of her one day, even if it proved to be a boon for others.

A cheerfully allowed Inuzuka-san a moment to struggle through the complexities of being an honorary Kumo nin without somehow betraying Konoha, before he continued. “Being an honorary Kumo nin comes with its own set of perks – you will always be considered a diplomatic envoy from Konoha, with every courtesy extended to you even when you may be in Lightning for missions not pertaining to being a diplomatic envoy. So long as you’re well-behaved, of course. Kumo nin reserve the right to protect themselves if you attack them. I fully expect you to be a mentor, as reasonably allowed as a Konoha nin can be for a Hidden Village who aren’t, quite frankly, bosom buddies and allies.” A had learned that the stick was always best hidden when extending the carrot.

“I, uh…” Now she looked like she was trying to figure out how this would benefit Konoha without getting herself into a lot of trouble. Good grief, hadn’t anyone in Konoha bothered to explain how readable her expressions were? Maybe she really was just doing some _gardening_ with Danzo, because A just couldn’t imagine someone like the War Hawk not trying to force this kunoichi into better disguising her expressions.

“The one thing I ask of you – and I only _ask_ , for you are not my kunoichi to give orders to – is that you maintain an acquaintance with Karui. Don’t be a stranger, and don’t become a stranger. Write letters to her, so she will see you as a mentor who doesn’t regret saving her life and will always hold it in honor, instead of a patricidal assassin.” And with her brain injury, Inuzuka-san was sure to let something valuable accidentally slip.

“Uh, okay?”

After being assured that she was now sufficiently confused, A settled back in his chair. “Now, all of this doesn’t erase the fact that your original mission was delayed due to injuries incurred upon rescuing _my_ kunoichi. So, how do you think I should present such news to your Hokage, given that you were Karui’s responsibility to keep safe and not the other way around?”

Inuzuka-san looked sheepish. “Er. Maybe I should write it for you.”

Glad that he wasn’t responsible (and certain that it would give his code breakers something to do), A pushed the paper and pen to Inuzuka-san. She held the pen awkwardly in her left hand ( _right-handed,_ A noted, once more, for her dossier), and stared at the sheet for a moment. Then she scratched her head with the pen, leaving a blue streak of ink on her skin, and said, “What’s the kanji for boo-boo?”

_And illiterate, too._

oOoOoOo

_Dear Hokage-sama. I made it to Kumo and delivered the required package. However, I boo-booed. =( The Kumo team accompanying me was attacked (totally unrelated to the mission) and I kinda got involved helping them because someone had to protect the young chuunin kunoichi, andI broke my right hand and arm. And I guess falling into the Great Gorge at the same time made us backtrack a lot. Also, there were blizzards. I’m currently being tended to by the best medics, and the Raikage said I can go home when I’m sufficiently healed up so the travel back doesn’t make the injuries worse. He was very pleased that I rescued his kunoichi during the attack, but not happy that I was injured in doing so. Please make sure that Pakkun is making Kakashi eat his meals correctly, and for that matter, make sure that Sakumo is getting his meals, too. They both seemed awful skinny when I left. =( I’ll be home as soon as possible – no detours for me if I can’t help it (the Great Gorge not withstanding). This isn’t a pleasure trip, after all. =)_

_Inuzuka Tsume_

“And… you somehow expect this to be a code, Raikage-sama? Aside from the fact that it’s barely legible and my _six_ year old could write better, I’m not detecting anything out of the ordinary. It doesn’t have the typical coding or style of Konoha messages.” Saitou was the head of A’s Intel, the man most responsible for breaking and making codes. He was a large man, his head shaved bare, and he wore sunglasses similar to Killer B’s. “Seriously… she added _smiley faces_ to this message. Who even does that as a grown adult?” The reflecting sunlight off of snow was famous for throwing people into temporary snow blindness, so sunglasses were a common accessory for many Kumo nin.

A pointed at a sentence on the paper. “Why would she mention Hatake Kakashi _and_ Hatake Sakumo if it was an innocent letter?” Seeing Inuzuka-san’s bold and casual acknowledgement of two legendary shinobi had given A pause. The stuff of legends made the unbelievable look like trivial events. He wondered if mentioning the Hatakes in light of the casual reference to falling off the Great Gorge meant that Inuzuka Tsume’s life was also wrapped within the stuff of legends, and shrouded in great secrecy.

Saitou sighed. “Darui looked over the letter to see if there was anything that seemed uncharacteristic, and the only thing he pointed out was the line of how this isn’t a pleasure trip. He said she had never made any mention of such. She talked quite often about all her children – including Kakashi – so nothing really stands out except for that. The only code that could be in this letter would be predetermined phrases that indicate whether Inuzuka-san is in danger or not, I suspect. We’re not going to get anything out of predetermined phrases when we don’t know what the determination is.”

“Who’s Pakkun?”

“A dog.”

A considered the ninken. “I wasn’t aware that Hatake had a canine partner, even though his mother was Inuzuka-san’s older sister and he was fostered by the clan after Hatake Sakumo’s public dishonor.”

“Yeah, funny tale that, Darui had said. Apparently, when Inuzuka Natsumi left Konoha to fight in the Second Shinobi War, she was previously responsible for watching Kakashi, and couldn’t find a suitable caregiver when it came time to leave. The Queen of Summons gave two-year-old Kakashi a dog summon, Kakashi successfully summoned Pakkun, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Inuzuka Tsume had a loose lip, A thought once more. (He was not going to think of how _a two year old_ managed to successfully summon. That was… rather frightening. Hatake Kakashi respectfully deserved his reputation as an S-class legend, having earned it at an unprecedented young age. And being a simpleton teenager raising such a legend clearly gave Inuzuka Tsume immunity to the rare and unusual. No wonder she thought nothing of surviving a free fall into the Great Gorge.) “I don’t remember that being in Hatake Kakashi’s dossier.”

“I ordered Darui to write up everything that Tsume said to be inserted later, sir.”

“Good.” Saitou was one of A’s better retention choices for a head of _something_. “Well, looking at this any further isn’t going to reveal anymore.” He had watched Inuzuka-san write the letter, face scrunched up in concentration, but he was mostly sure that was due to writing with her left hand and trying to remember the different kanji than it was trying to figure out where to slip in a coded message. A wasn’t surprised that she made no mention of the dubious honor that A had imposed upon her – that was something best brought to one’s leader face to face.

_A well-earned reputation as a simpleton._ As Killer B had implied, Tsume was a little too literal, a little too genuine to be sly. Well, A _had_ demanded that Sarutobi Hiruzen send someone who wasn’t going to be sneaking around, and the Hokage had most certainly complied. That damn old goat probably laughed for two days running after sending Inuzuka Tsume packing up north, fully knowing exactly what kind of trouble such a woman could create, even if she tried her hardest to be on her best behavior and faithfully follow all orders. Damn it.

A hated it when he was forced to be _reasonable_. What was the point of being the Raikage if he didn’t get to casually abuse his power once in a while?

“Send it by owl. If the Yozora are on the rampage again, the owl will get through.” The Yozora clan considered owls to be sacred animals, and the Chairo clan’s limit allowed them to share their minds with their owls, similar to the Aburame clan. “And send it to Inuzuka-san’s comrades in Shikotan. I’ll let them be responsible for telling their Hokage.”

oOoOoOo

Omoi and Samui were adorable, Tsume decided. Omoi reminded her of her bears, solid and round and brimming with questions, and Samui was graceful and pretty, her flaxen-blond hair too similar to many of the Yamanaka Clan for Tsume not to make a comparison. And Yugata Nii was strikingly beautiful, even if there was something about her that rubbed Tsume the wrong way… Tsume couldn’t tell if it was the scent of _cat_ , or the considering, sideways looks that Nii kept giving her, with those oddly-curved eyes.

In the presence of Samui and Nii, Tsume felt like an awkward little hedgehog with a bad hair day. She felt it appropriate to sit next to the equally-unfortunate looking Karui. Karui with her darling, rich red hair that Tsume really wanted to touch…

“Hey! Keep your hands to yourself!” Karui scooted her chair outside of Tsume’s questing reach, yanking her cross stitch of butterflies along. She hunched over her project, scent tinged with embarrassment, other hand trying to smooth down the stubble on her head. Tsume didn’t know what the big deal was. If the Raikage had no problem cross stitching hearts and doves, then butterflies and tulips would seem perfectly normal. Of course, Nii’s cross stitch of No Fucks Left To Give spoke to Tsume in a way nothing else really did, and seemed oddly out of place compared to Omoi’s kittens playing with a ball of yarn and Samui’s homey country kitchen.

“I wish I was artistic like you guys,” Tsume said. “I want to be able to make pretty things.” Her three year old toddlers could do a better job drawing than she could. But, she thought with a happy little perk, she was an awesome cook! She should make some of Shinchuu’s butterscotch cookies; that would show them that she was a master of the culinary arts!

Nii growled when Tsume tried to make her way into the kitchen. “Killer B said you were to remain in my sight at all times, so plant your butt back into that chair. You’re not allowed to wander.”

Tsume obeyed with a sulk and repressed the urge to growl. 

oOoOoOo

Jiraiya held his arm out in expectation. The owl, a great white horned monstrosity, settled on it reluctantly. It was a third of Jiraiya’s size, but he held it with great ease. “I take it you’re supposed to deliver something.”

Anko, her arms full of groceries from the market, crowded close. “Not one of ours – we don’t have owls.”

“No. A message from the Raikage. Thank you.” He untied the missive from the owl’s leg and shook his arm. The bird stubbornly clung. “Want an answer then, do you? Then swing by tonight, I’ll have it then.” The owl seemed satisfied with the answer and took flight, its great wings nearly knocking Anko off her feet. Jiraiya tucked the missive into his coat and then jammed a hand into one of Anko’s grocery bags. “Where’s my dango?”

“Hey!” Anko danced out of his reach, too occupied with keeping her goods to kick him in the shin. “Those are for Kiba and Naruto and me! Get your own, buster!”

Jiraiya sighed. “Alas. No respect for your elders.”

“I stop respecting my elders once they become ancient, dried up old husks, _gramps._ ”

Jiraiya’s hand flew to his chest. “You wound me so needlessly, Anko-chan! I am still a man in my prime!”

“Yeah, right.” Once she was out of Jiraiya’s reach, Anko kicked someone who was probably either copping a feel of her ass or trying to steal her wallet. The wailing pain following the bruised shin bone made the two Konoha ninjas move rather quickly back to their inn. “Tell me, what was life like back before dirt was invented?”

“It was very clean, and we respected our elders.”

They bickered good-naturedly all the way back to the inn. Jiraiya was patiently fond of Anko’s rude impatience, largely because it reminded him of Inuzuka Natsumi, and a little of Tsume (although Tsume was rarely ever able to make sharp retorts), and dear Tsunade-hime. Although from the looks of it, Anko’s bust was going to be more like Tsume’s and less (a _lot_ less) like than Oyubi’s or Tsunade’s.

_Ah, Jiraiya, you really are a dirty old man, perving on fifteen year old girls._ Not that Tsume had been much older when she and her hormones went on the rampage through Konoha, leaving few broken hearts but several broken egos in her wake, so perhaps there was hope yet for Anko to have illicit adventures of her own that would provide Jiraiya plenty of entertainment and inspirations.

And once she was eighteen, Anko would have the – admittedly dubious – honor of being one of Jiraiya’s muses. He had a number of muses – all of them beautiful and shapely and quite female in their own way…well, there was one who was decidedly masculine and _wasn’t_ Jiraiya, but he firmly told himself that he needed _some_ inspiration for his male protagonists, and the conglomerate of tall, dark, silent/nasty that was the ill-begotten test tube love child between Orochimaru and Danzo was a great seller, especially among his female fans. Having an extensive spy ring was an expensive job to fund – thus the need for bestselling erotica novels, since epic retellings of fairy tales didn’t exactly tickle the fancy of a population willing to spend money on sex – and Jiraiya was almost sure that Danzo would appreciate the finer points of such irony were he to ever learn just how Jiraiya funded his operations. Orochimaru… well, Jiraiya reached the point of just not caring what _that ass_ thought.

Not as much, at least.

Shikake was present in his room, patiently showing Naruto and Kiba the finer points of drying herbs. Based on how the boys fidgeted, this was not the most exciting topic, and they were desperate for any sort of distraction. At the sight of Anko and her groceries, the boys instantly swarmed her for treats. With the younger audience’s attention turned elsewhere, Jiraiya opened the missive and shared it with Shikake.

“Ah. Well, at least we know that Killer B is keeping his word,” Shikake said after scanning the message.

“Indeed.” The note was written in the genuine rambling quality that typified Tsume’s reports, punctuated with sloppy little drawings of a happy or a sad face. The most important line had been the last before her signature: _This isn’t a pleasure trip, after all. =)_ As a code, it could only be recognized by those with intimate knowledge of what her life had been like after Shinzou sold her to a brothel; not even Kokoro was aware of it.

By indicating that it wasn’t like Madame Haori’s Palace of Pleasure, Tsume declared that she was currently safe.

“Still,” Shikake said, “for that level of injury, maybe we should send the ANBU team that’s here.”

Jiraiya imagined the look on Tsume’s face if her sons popped up to rescue her. Then he imagined the look on her sons’ faces if they were told that they had to go rescue their mother. _From who?_ Kakashi would ask, barely looking up from Jiraiya’s latest chapter.

_Are we rescuing mom or the people she’s stuck with?_ Yamato would say next, eager to get away from his own reading duties with the toddlers.

“Not all the way to Kumo, surely.”

Shikake shook his head. “Of course not. The Raikage would take that as an excuse to feel insulted. After all, I’m sure that the man is quite eager to prove that he’s better than Konoha in every way, including the treatment of diplomatic envoys.”

Shikake and Jiraiya considered the letter for a moment. “Well, to be fair to Kumo, that wouldn’t be too hard,” Jiraiya said finally. “Even if she _is_ prone to snatching children, Tsume knows better than to do so in Kumo, so they’re bound to treat her better than a suspicious older man with questionable tendencies to snatch young female toddlers.”

“At least one would hope so. Tsume is already aware of the _eight_ children she currently has awaiting her back home.” Eight-and-a-half if someone counted Anko, who was currently cleaning up Kiba and Naruto after they managed to engulf half a bar of chocolate each while smearing the rest of the chocolate on their faces, clothes, and hands. “But you’re right. We should send at least half of the ANBU team up to meet up somewhere with Tsume – Yamato could hold her still in place with his wood release if it’s necessary,” and it wouldn’t be the first time that Yamato had to restrain Tsume, “and Kakashi can squeeze her heartstrings with his pout– because we’re going to have to get the toddlers back to Konoha. Hiruzen only gave you two weeks to be gone.”

Shikake cast a considering eye on Anko.

“Hotaru would be a better choice,” Jiraiya put in quickly, pointing to Tsume’s report of her injuries. “She knows healing techniques that would be beneficial for Tsume.”

“Ah, true.”

That, and Hotaru wasn’t nearly as entertaining as Anko. Jiraiya would accompany Shikake, Kuromaru, and the toddlers back to Konoha, and it was just too long of a trip not to bring along someone who amused him, because half of the ANBU team were boring sticks-in-the-mud. “Let’s look at a map and come up with a good meeting place for everyone that would make the Raikage… well, not happy, but perhaps a little less prone to being grumpy.”

oOoOoOo

Kakashi adored his little worrywart of a brother. While not as prone as his favorite aunt-turned-mother to bring home the sorriest-looking strays she came across (or even the not-so-sorry-looking strays), Kakashi nurtured a soft spot for all of his siblings, and he was man enough to acknowledge that Yamato was probably his favorite of them all. Of course, Yamato had also been the first, and Tsume had more-or-less assigned Kakashi to Yamato in virtually the same way he suspected Grandmother Shinzou had assigned Tsume to Kakashi when he was first born. ( _“Yamato-chan is your new little brother, Kakashi. That means you gotta love him and look out for him… say, can you help me pry him out of this cubbyhole, if you don’t have anything better to do? I thought I could suck my stomach in enough to squeeze through, and no, I’m too far along to suck my stomach in. Also, I’m stuck.”_ )

Yamato fussed when he learned about Tsume getting hurt, stewed about how he couldn’t accompany and protect Naruto and Kiba all the way back to Konoha, fretted about Tsume as they left Shikotan, and then henpecked everyone to make sure that they were safe from frostbite. It amused Kakashi, in a sadistic, slightly evil manner common to many an older brother, to egg Yamato’s neuroses.

Hotaru eventually caught on. “I think we should stop feeding into Yamato’s concerns,” she told Kakashi firmly after waking him up the morning after they had left Shikotan. It was the end of the final watch, which had been hers, and they would need to eat a quick breakfast before resuming their trek through the snowy passes before reaching a poor village of yak herders just two (summer) days’ travel from Kumo. It was the closest they were allowed to approach the Hidden Village without causing undue alarm. 

“Aaaww, but that’s just no fun.” Especially when he didn’t have his other ANBU comrade – Ebisu – to poke. Genma was a steady, reliable comrade, but he was admittedly _stable_. Kakashi was convinced that the Hokage assigned him a team that contained two of the most neurotic people in ANBU (home of the neurotic ninja, which said something) for a reason, but he was still trying to ascertain such a reason, other than the fact that the Hokage figured Kakashi was Inuzuka enough to need someone to keep him entertained.

(Kakashi also suspected that sometimes the Hokage picked team member assignments randomly out of his hat. No one ever forgot that one time he created an entire team out of people named for eggplants.)

“I know, but I just don’t know how much more of this fretting I can take. I’m not used to worrywarts.”

Kakashi nodded his agreement. “Too true. Jiraiya’s team seemed a little too sensible to have a worrywart like Yamato-chan.” It must’ve been really dull. Kakashi didn’t remember Jiraiya’s team getting into nearly as much trouble as his father’s team.

“Oh, we were a team that learned quite well from observation, and your mother’s team gave us _plenty_ of educational material. Remind me to tell you more about that one time Jiraiya got chased through town by a civilian pizza delivery boy, now that he’s no longer around to try and stop me from telling the story.”

Well, that was certainly true. Kakashi could vouch that his own team had learned many interesting things, including what Minato-sensei looked like he was doused in sparkles and hanging by his feet from a tree. He hadn’t known what Tsume wanted to do with all the craft supplies she had talked him and Obito into shopping for her, but he learned then that he really needed to question her more often when she asked for favors, especially when it came to craft stores after the Fire Daimyo explicitly banned her from every such store in the entire country. “But I want you to know that Yamato is going to fuss about _everything_ – he doesn’t need any help from me.”

Hotaru sighed. “We shall see.” And then she woke Yamato from his slumber.

oOoOoOo

“So you put the food dye in the spray bottle here, like this, and then you pick a spot at night to get before the patrols find you,” Karui explained as she and Tsume mixed shades. Karui’s water produced a lovely peach shade. Tsume’s looked like an ugly muddy brown. Tsume felt like she was fingerpainting with Hana and Yamato all over again, and she tried hard to ignore the overwhelming feeling of homesickness.

oOoOoOo

“Do you think Mom is all right?” Yamato asked as they skirted the edge of a ravine where a harsh wind blew snow and ice up.

“I’m sure they’re treating her just fine,” Hotaru insisted. “Be careful of stepping over here – Boku said that the ice feels shallow.”

Yamato fretted. “I mean, I’m sure that Kumo is going to treat her just fine, as long as she doesn’t find a helpless orphan that she can talk the Raikage into keeping, but I think at this point she may be a little orphaned out.” He scooted a little faster when the ice cracked beneath his feet. He reached solid ground before the ice bridge broke away, crashed down the cliff’s side. Kakashi gripped Yamato’s sleeve, before reluctantly releasing his white-knuckled grip. “And Kumo does have a habit of keeping foreign ninjas. I wonder what sort of torture and brainwashing they go through?”

“Told you,” Kakashi whispered to Hotaru out of the side of his mouth.

oOoOoOo

When Tsume had asked the Kiri nin in how things were going, because it was strange to see an enemy nin socializing with Academy students, it had been a conventional how-are-you question that was socially acceptable between two strangers greeting each other. The class had split into different groups to work on their cross stitch, and seeing the adult shinobi surrounded by preteen students had been rather jarring. She was still trying her best not to ask questions that clearly indicated a gathering of Intel.

Tsume hadn’t expected the Kiri nin to immediately present her his life’s story, of how a Kumo jounin had managed to subdue and capture his entire team with an embroidery hoop and sky-blue silk thread, how the Kiri nin had been locked up in a very comfortable cell, fed excellent food, provided lots of reading material – choice comics _and_ porn, it was _amazing –_ never once tortured or even questioned, and then released from the prison cell to mingle with the population once snow hit two months ago, with stern directions not to kill anyone, or he would be left naked and abandoned in the mountains. If he somehow managed to sneak away and make it back to Kiri alive, more power to him, but Kumo offered comfortable apartments and supplies, so who was he to spit in the eye of such a grand boon? After all, it wasn’t like he had a whole lot of loyalty to Kiri, not when he had just been an innocent kid helping with his family’s rice paddies and minding his own business twenty years ago when a creepy old man with red eyes had kidnapped him and handed him over to Kiri in the first place.

Tsume had been stuck tagging along with Nii, who had decided to gift Tsume’s freshly baked butterscotch cookies to the Academy teacher who lived next door. Nii was making desperate bedroom eyes with absolutely no care about the loud earful Tsume was getting on how Kumo treated their captives, and the Academy teacher was smiling in a vapid, impersonal way that indicated she had no idea how badly Nii wanted her.

Tsume was half-tempted to tell Nii that maybe she ought to consider just stripping naked, and parading around the Academy teacher with a large sign reading _free orgasms for next-door neighbor Academy Teachers._

The Kiri nin, who had eyed Nii in such a way that he could also see the desire from three countries away, threaded the embroidery floss for his _Home Sweet Home_ with a rough sketch of Kumo’s mountains. “So, in summary, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. If I’d known just how great this place was, I’d’ve tried to assassinate the Raikage long before this year. Could you hand me that skein of green over there?”

oOoOoOo

Kakashi tilted his head back to drink out of his canteen, stopped, and then tilted his canteen upside down. He looked mournful as nothing came out. “My water froze again.”

“I can’t feel my toes,” Yamato muttered.

Hotaru increased the circulating chakra in her body as she heard her kikaichu discuss the pros and cons of hibernation.

After they crested the mountain peak, only to reveal more mountains in which to cross, Yamato hunched his shoulders and knotted his fingers restlessly. Ever since Tsume brought him home, tucked beneath a large umbrella, and then learned the hard way that there was a cubby hole in her kitchen that was just large enough for Yamato to hide in, Kakashi had known Yamato to have issues with the open sky. In the mountains where the white-capped peaks disappeared into the white clouds, heaven and earth verging into one, even Kakashi felt exposed, like a blight on a pristine canvass of white. He could only imagine how overwhelmed Yamato must feel.

“Hey, Kakashi, do you wonder what Naruto and Kiba are doing right now? I bet that Anko is trying to teach them how to braid Jiraiya’s hair…”

Kakashi normally didn’t approve of talking on his ANBU missions, liking to keep discussions to minimal necessities – he faced his missions with a tight focus and required his teammates to do the same — but if Yamato’s babbling served to ease some anxiety and to distract himself from his agoraphobia, then Kakashi wasn’t going to complain.

And Hotaru wondered why Kakashi poked Yamato. It was a tough job, being the mature older brother, but someone had to do it.


	36. Delta Years - Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. I am pregnant with twins, have had to take a whopping dose of progesterone to support the early stages of their pregnancy, developed gestational diabetes, and have been suffering THE WORST pregnancy brain, ever. My husband moved my computer, and I totally forgot about writing/updating in the last, uh month. To make up for this, I shall post the next chapter of the Delta Years tonight - it's also the last chapter before the Beta Years start, where you all will learn far more about Tsume's circus years, and that man with red eyes who kidnapped the Kiri nin from his family in Rice Paddies twenty years ago. >:D

When A decided to check on Killer B’s chuunin team and how they were doing with babysitting their Inuzuka diplomat while Killer B and another team took on the Yozora who were raiding a village that three hours away, he should’ve been surprised to walk in on what was apparently an impromptu lesson on sex education.

A very _thorough_ lesson on sex education.

He _should’ve_ been surprised. He kind of was. And yet, he also wasn’t; Inuzuka Tsume had amazingly poor boundaries, so _of course_ the hands-on demonstration of how to properly put on a condom (with the use of an anatomically-correct carrot) seemed like something she absolutely _would_ do. In a fashion that he suspected was inherent to Inuzuka everywhere, Inuzuka Tsume had commandeered Killer B’s kitchen and was using a large white board and scented erasable markers to bullet point her lecture – her artwork and writing still left much to be desired, and he wasn’t willing to believe it was all due to using her nondominant hand.

Since Karui, Omoi, Samui, _and_ Darui were all seated at the kitchen table facing her, bent over notebooks, charcoal nubs scribbling away, and even Nii barely acknowledged his entrance with a flicker of eyes before turning back to Inuzuka-san with rapt attention, A decided that he had time to sit and observe. Well, lean and observe. All the kitchen chairs were taken, so he folded his arms in front of himself and rested his weight against the kitchen cabinets. He made sure to keep his expression stern, even though Inuzuka-san ignored him.

“…And if any guy tells you ladies that the rubbers are uncomfortable or they can’t feel anything, give him the boot. Remember, if he ain’t going to wrap the rod, he ain’t welcome to your bod.”

Samui’s hand shot upward. “What if you’re on birth control?”

“That’s a good segue into this next part. Omoi, Darui, even if your sexual liaison is on birth control, or is male, it’s still a good idea to keep the down and low wrapped. Sexually transmitted diseases are frequently invisible, and you may unexpectedly wind up with a bad case of tertiary syphilis thirty years after a one-night stand with someone who swore up and down they were disease-free. But say it’s not a one-night stand – say it’s someone you’ve decided to have a dedicated relationship with. Birth control is not 100% effective. If you ladies are on the pill, you have to take it in the same three hour window every day, or its effectiveness drops. Lots of other medications – like antibiotics you’re now on for the syphilis you could’ve avoided if only you had used a condom – decreases the efficacy of the birth control. When you’re on a mission, it’s hard to take the birth control at the exact same time every day. Not many enemy nin will appreciate you pausing a fight to make sure you don’t lose that window. Furthermore, if the woman has a female disorder wrecking her hormones – like endometriosis or polycystic ovarian disease – the birth control will regulate the hormones in such a way that it could actually _improve_ fertility.”

Nii raised her hand this time. “What if you tie your tubes?”

Inuzuka-san’s answering smile was razor-sharp. It made a chill race down A’s spine. “My grandmother cauterized the tubes of her granddaughter, after she made the mistake of getting pregnant at the age of fifteen by a man Grandmother wanted absolutely nothing to do with. The tubes healed and reconnected, although we don’t know _when_ , which resulted in another surprise pregnancy twenty-some years later. Statistically, this occurs in about three or four percent of tubals. It has a very high risk of ectoptic pregnancies. Condom use is very effective, _if_ the condoms are put on correctly, but poor fitting of condom will have a failure rate of up to thirty percent.”

Samui flipped through some of her notebook pages. “Correct fit, single layer, intact, appropriate lube.”

“Exactly. In a fight, dodging is going to help prevent most injuries from contact, but you can’t rely on just that to win the battle, and no one can’t dodge everything. Birth control and condom use is the same way when it comes to sex. It helps you dodge most everything, but never expect it to be 100% effective.” Tsume wiped away the bullet points outlining a variety of birth control. “And remember, anyone who insists that the pull-out method works just fine to prevent pregnancy needs to be gutted and taken out of the gene pool.”

As one, Darui and Karui said, “Little swimmers are impatient and don’t wait for climax.”

“Right.” Having cleared the board, Inuzuka-san made several more bullet points ( _battle rape, date rape, consent, seduction)_ with the blueberry-scented marker. As she wrote, she spoke. “Battle rape is not as common as it used to be, especially during the Warring Era, but unfortunately it still occurs with enough frequency that you all probably know at least one person who survived. _There is no shame in surviving_. Like any other battle, if you live to walk away, learn from it. Live well, become stronger, and make that bastard rue the day he decided to power-play with your sex organs. Date rape is also common; never leave a drink alone or accept an unidentifiable drink from a stranger, unless it’s a mission and you’re supposed to because you drew the short straw on who’s supposed to be the decoy.” She underlined consent, and then leveled a stern glare at the chuunin teenagers, and Darui. “This is a big one. Outside of missions, in your own Village, in other places, especially if you get involved with civilians, don’t be That Person. Don’t use your strength to force an unwilling person into having sex with you. However, missions are entirely different, aren’t they, Raikage-sama?”

Until then, the chuunin and Darui had failed to register A’s presence. He watched as Darui hunched over his notebook, and Karui and Omoi blushed as red as Karui’s covered hair. Only Samui retained her composure as she tossed back her fine hair and leveled him with a steady gaze. “Raikage-sama, Inuzuka-san is _appalled_ at the lack of sex education in the Academy.”

Inuzuka-san wrinkled her nose. “Appalled isn’t how I described it.”

“‘Fucking lacked any info on fucking appropriately’ is the exact description,” Nii supplied. “Raikage-sama, all Karui asked was how a woman has sex with another woman. When Tsume-san learned that Karui had no idea what a clitoris was,” Nii ducked the charcoal that Karui lobbed at her, “she declared that you had given her full permission to provide Karui with an appropriate education in whatever manner she saw fit to do so.”

A twitched. That was… that was so _not_ what he had said! He glared at Inuzuka-san. She had raised her chin in blatant challenge with narrowed eyes, cocking her hip with one leg slightly forward in a stance that was so masculine in its aggression that he would’ve immediately challenged her to an arm wrestling contest to assert his dominance. Even if her dominant arm and torso were still in multiple little pieces. “I do recall asking Inuzuka-san to honor the spirit of holding Karui’s life in honor, and to be a _mentor.”_ The floor rumbled with the depth of his growling voice.

The smile that spread across Inuzuka-san face was like a fire consuming dried brush. There was too much teeth and a wicked glint in her eyes for the smile to be amused. “Raikage-sama,” she said in a soft voice, with enough purr that Nii and Darui were wiping away drool, and that was without the use of her infernal siren seal, “ _no one_ should come out of the Academy thinking that chlamydia is a pretty flower.” And, based on how much redder Omoi’s face suddenly became, _that_ had also been said to Inuzuka-san.

Okay, fair enough.

But A still wasn’t about to show any form of retreat before Inuzuka Tsume. This was _his_ Village, and these were _his_ nin. “I don’t remember assigning you mentorship for Karui’s teammates.”

Inuzuka-san smile remained unchanged. “The team stands as one, and falls as one. Besides, as a woman, I cannot stand by and just let Omoi and Darui float through life with equal ignorance of what the clitoris is, or how to pet it appropriately. _You_ may have the luxury of ignoring feminine pleasure, because the cock is so much easier to stimulate, but that’s not fair to any woman these two manage to successfully bed.”

Darui pinched the bridge of his nose. “ _I_ do too know,” he muttered defensively.

Nii wagged her eyebrows as A. “I like this one – are you sure we can’t keep her?”

A growled. “Oh _hell_ no. Not even if her Hokage asked me really nicely, and sweetened the deal with a treaty that he gives me carte blanche to create!” He crossed his arms and glared at Inuzuka-san. “Aside from a string of honeypot missions, what’re your qualifications for teaching young, impressionable minds about sex?” He thought her memory was awful – how on earth could she remember what she was teaching?

“ _I,_ ” Inuzuka-san declared with a haughty voice, “run a mandatory sex ed workshop for my clan that’s open to all Konoha ninja. I’ve been putting it on four times a year for the last ten years.”

… Why the hell wasn’t _that_ in her dossier? A ground his teeth together and thought of what stern words were needed with his Intel. “Since you’re so intent on providing everyone here a thorough education, what do you think is most important for a _pregnant_ kunoichi to know?”

Tsume frowned, but more in thought than in challenge. “Off the top of my head, don’t perform your own emergency Cesarean section, unless you absolutely have to, like an enemy crushing your placenta _just_ because they’re an asshole who want to cause the worst possible pain.”

…wait, what? Not only was that oddly specific, he had actually been hoping for a good lead into how a kunoichi _couldn’t_ be pregnant and be on active duty at the same time. Okay, so maybe asking an Inuzuka clanswoman her opinion on being pregnant kunoichi wasn’t the best choice. That was when her Bingo picture was taken, after all, while apparently calming the savage beast that had its very own Bingo entry.

Nii raised her hand. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”

Inuzuka-san turned back to the white board to erase it. “I hadn’t expected to get to the whole being pregnant while on active duty just yet, but sure. Let me think for a moment.” She wrote the bullet points in strawberry-scented red: _health complications_ , _chakra control, social supports._ After a moment, she added _physical activity and duress._ “Every Village and every clan does things a little different when it comes to pregnant kunoichi. I’d probably get into trouble if I talk about other Konoha clans, but I’m Clan Head of the Inuzuka, and none of what I’m about to tell you is a clan or Village secret, so whatever. I’m Queen Alpha Bitch. I’ll do what I want.” 

A had a feeling that Inuzuka-san declared herself Queen Alpha Bitch frequently enough that most people just smiled and nodded along. Or gritted their teeth and silently bore it, like he was doing now.

Inuzuka-san sat down on the edge of the kitchen table, and used the capped strawberry marker to punctuate her words, waving it at her audience. “Before we get into what it’s like to be pregnant while on active duty, it’s important for you all to know how babies are made.”

“We already covered the mechanics of sex,” Omoi said, flipping through his notebook. “Insert tab A into Slot B, pump until swimmers are released. If fertile, boom, pregnant.”

Tsume squinted at him. “In a nutshell, sure. Sperm without known obstacles meets egg ripe for the taking. Fertilized egg attaches to uterus, and boom. Pregnant. Lots of women have problems with pregnancy, which range from little things like bloated, sore breasts and stretch marks across their ass, to really big things like blood pressure so high they stroke out and die. Ligaments stretch, making feet wider and longer, hips widen as the pelvic bones spread, increased weight and pressure around their middle from the expanding uterus, _killer_ heartburn. All of this can throw off a woman’s center of balance, and there goes your skill at dodging and throwing punches. And don’t get me started on morning sickness – trust me, enemy nin don’t appreciate you vomiting all over them in the middle of the fight, because morning sickness is a misnomer – it doesn’t stick arpound just in the morning. There’s food aversions and cravings, normal and weird. Fatigue, insomnia, weird dreams, increased or tanked sex drive, emotional swings all over the place. I once _bawled_ when I learned that Kakashi had eaten the last of the pickles in our house, because it was midnight and not a single market would be open. We had to do a midnight raid on Minato, and I’m probably the only woman alive who can say that she successfully stole dill pickles out of the Fourth Hokage’s panty. Those were the best dill pickles I ever had. And damn it, I deserved them too for having to dismantle his traps just to get into the pantry. Who knew he was so defensive about his _food._ ” She scratched under her cast in thought. “Then again, he dated Kushina. So, that probably explains _that_.”

A was starting to suspect that the gods had taken one look at how freakishly talented, strong, fast, and intelligent Namikaze Minato would be, and decided to create Inuzuka Tsume, because _someone_ had to keep the man humble _somehow_. Even if it was just via dill pickle thievery.

“In short, pregnancies are hard, rough work, and anyone can develop health problems that will require a kunoichi to go on a leave of absence. I won’t lie and say that yeah, your career won’t suffer.

“But being pregnant doesn’t make you any less of a kunoichi. If you’re not having any complications, a pregnancy shouldn’t stop you from active duty. I didn’t have any issues with my daughter. I was nine months pregnant on a supply mission run when I went into labor, and Hana was born in a forest in the Land of Fire, with a random Sand nin that I rescued handing supplies to my ten year old makeshift midwifes, while Minato held my hand and his team acted as said makeshift midwives.” After a thoughtful pause, tapping her chin with the marker, Inuzuka-san added, “Don’t ever let an Uchiha be your makeshift midwife. You should never, _ever_ , be that desperate in life.”

“Duly noted,” Samui declared with far more seriousness than A felt was appropriate, and she even wrote such in her notebook.

“What about the loss of chakra control during the pregnancy?” A asked. If everyone else got to ask questions, so should he. Truthfully, no one had ever bothered to sit down with him to explain pregnancies to him. Not that he ever cared before, because he was highly unlikely to get any offspring that didn’t involve the mechanics of a _turkey baster_. He watched Karui, Samui, and Nii watching Inuzuka-san with a strange hunger for knowledge about what their bodies could do now, or in the future. He was slowly and silently realizing that he was the Raikage to _kunoichi._ Well, he had always known that, but in his mind, they were always more like, well, shinobi, except with boobs and less physical strength.

His kunoichi deserved every bit of accurate information regarding their bodies as his shinobi deserved information on how to properly care for their weapons. He had been sorely remiss. His kunoichi deserved the opportunity to be the best warriors their bodies allowed them to be, and not because they were good at seduction.

“It’s commonly said that kunoichi lose their chakra control when they get pregnant, so it’s harder to perform jutsu and to fight.” Inuzuka-san shrugged. “It happens often enough that people assume _every_ kunoichi goes through it, but the Inuzuka clan, being strictly maternal, wouldn’t have survived three hundred years with no males if we were incapable of taking care of ourselves when half of us adult women were pregnant at any given time. Rarely is the loss of chakra control serious enough to require a temporary stay of duties. However, every pregnancy is different. I said I was fine when pregnant with my daughter. When I was pregnant with my son, I couldn’t do any tracking missions. The hormones made me so sensitive to strong odors that it was _non-stop_ nausea. And to an Inuzuka, _all_ odors are strong. I actually did missions as a decoy with, uh….” Her expression mutated several times as she wrestled with uncertainty and doubt, and then finally relaxed as she shrugged. “Whatever, Wicked-Eye Fugaku might appreciate this story better than the Pencil-Dick story, and it’s not a state secret.” After a pause, she added, “And it doesn’t insult the memory of Hyuuga-san, so there’s an added bonus.”

A was far more curious about any story that had Uchiha Fugaku and Pencil-Dick in the same sentence.

“At the tail-end of the Third War, there were issues with you guys attacking our supply lines, even after the peace treaties were signed. We got sick and tired of it, so Fugaku volunteered to drive a decoy wagon, with some of his younger clanspeople disguised as civilian children. You all know about this.”

A huffed an irritated sigh. “In our defense, the peace treaty between Konoha and Kumo was late in getting signed. You’ve seen how winter weather interferes with travel.” Kumo had been in turmoil because of the defeat and death of the Third Raikage, and Raikages are chosen through a string of tests – physical, mental, spiritual – that often last up to half a year, so there really hadn’t been a leader to appropriately work on peace treaties. In the meantime the stragglers still causing trouble in the other nations were making last-ditch efforts to make a name for themselves before the war officially ended. The Head Jounin, who had been Head Jounin under the Third Raikage, took advantage of the stragglers’ desperation and sent twenty of them off to destroy a single supplies wagon, expecting it to be an easy defeat.

All things considering, it had been an easy defeat – just not in the hands of Kumo nin.

“Sorry about that. If it makes you feel any better, I was too busy throwing up in the bushes to fight back. Just prior to this point, Mikoto-chan was riding along with Fugaku as part of the ongoing decoy. But her pregnancy did mess with how well she controlled her chakra, and after she nearly immolated the horses, it was decided that she needed to take a break from active duty. Most of the time, when people refer to loss of chakra control, they think that the woman loses her _chakra_ , and she gets weaker. That’s not it – most women wind up using way more chakra than they normally would, and they can’t control the exact power they produce with different techniques. I theorize that the reason men have more yang chakra is because they have more red blood cells. In pregnancy, our blood supply increases by as much as fifty percent.

“So, in this case, Mikoto-chan was too dangerous for a delicate mission. Or at least she was too dangerous to be around horses. And probably small children, since Fugaku was using Itachi and Shisui to help him as decoys. And since the ploy required the image of a happily married couple with the wife being very obviously pregnant and surrounded by children, and all I needed to do was sit next to Fugaku and make appropriate googly eyes at him, Minato figured that the horses and children would survive me, especially when I hitched Juubi up, because Juubi was itching for a good fight. Although I still think we could’ve aimed Mikoto-chan at the Kumo nin. It gets mighty cold up here. I’m sure you all would’ve appreciated a good old Grand Fireball.”

A waved a beefy hand at her. “No worries. Our ego was no less damaged for experienced Kumo nin to be thoroughly trounced by a seven year old Uchiha Shisui instead of by a pregnant kunoichi unable to adequately control her chakra.”

He should’ve demoted his Head Jounin when he became the Fourth Raikage. Huh. Maybe he really did owe Konoha a medal for killing the man. If it weren’t for Inuzuka Tsume being here as a diplomatic envoy to deliver the Hyuuga’s body, there was no way the sex education in his Academy would be receiving a badly-needed makeover.

A wondered, as Tsume went back to blathering on the importance of social supports, so kunoichi wouldn’t have to do a lengthy maternity leave spanning years to cover childcare at the expense of their skills and talents, _what the_ _hell_ was Konoha feeding their nin? Between a seven-year-old Uchiha Shisui using a D-rank jutsu to trounce multiple squads of enemy chuunin and jounin, a two year old Hatake Kakashi with enough developed chakra and control of such to successfully _summon_ , and a twelve year old Inuzuka Tsume ripping out a grown man’s spine, A was beginning to suspect that someone was dumping illicit steroids in the Konoha water system.

Which would probably explain why Orochimaru got run out of town – even though A’s Intel didn’t get all the details on the man’s _human experimentation_ , he was beginning to wonder if Orochimaru hadn’t been tinkering around with trying to create a bunch of superhuman ninja. Then again, why would Orochimaru even bother? The man just needed to be patient and wait for Konoha to produce some kind of new overpowered genius.

oOoOoOo

“I’ve never seen _anyone_ with wings before,” Yamato said breathlessly, pausing beside Kakashi to give him the wooden kunais that he had just made to replenish diminished supplies.

Kakashi eyed their attackers. “And they seem unusually pissed off against us, and I don’t think it’s because of the forest they can now roost in. You’d think that winged people would actually be grateful.”

“Probably had a run-in with Mom. She does have that effect on people. Or maybe it was you bringing out your one original technique. Good job on that, by the way.” Yamato’s trees slapped its branches together and pinned a flying shinobi within its tangled limbs.

“Thanks. I thought it might surprise them that a Konoha nin uses lightning techniques. Watch your head.”

Yamato whirled around and stabbed a swooping enemy. He used his foot to slide the body off the length of his sword. “You fill my life with fun and excitement, brother, but sometimes I could use a little less.”

“Yeah, because trying to hunt down my father all day is such a boring and tedious task. Is it true that he once led you through Danzo’s gardening quarters?” Kakashi made a few hand signals, and a wave of snow swirled up like a tornado to snatch two more flying nin out of the sky, before the shards of ice within the tornado shredded the trapped nin. Thankfully the rushing wind blocked most of the agonizing screams.

“I like Sakumo,” Yamato said defensively. His narrowed eyes and stubbornly set jaw reminded Kakashi of Obito, even though their faces weren’t similar… although Obito was the same age when he died as Yamato was now.

( _“Oh yeah? Your dad is a better hero right now, with his reputation all in tatters, than you’ll ever be! If he were here now, he wouldn’t hesitate to go after Rin, and you know that! **Your** soul is rotten to the core, worse than anything Hatake Sakumo ever digs around in!”)_

Hotaru, balancing upon an ice-slick boulder that the winds had exposed, unleashed a wave of kikaichu against the remaining shinobi. The skies overhead blotted black and screams echoed on the wind.

Kakashi slapped a hand on Yamato’s shoulder and grinned, though his cheeks stung from the cold and his heart felt like a blackened lump. “You have to be the most rotten soul to dislike my dad. Anyway, think we should stuff a body into a scroll and bring it to T&I?”

“That depends on whether Hotaru-san is going to leave us enough of a body to stuff in a scroll.”

oOoOoOo

“What are you sniffing about?” Karui asked as she showed Tsume how to use her chakra to balance on the snow. Snow had a lot more air molecules and lower density point than water; it was proving to be an excellent chakra control exercise.

Tsume turned her nose from the wind. “Nii finally managed to seduce the Academy Teacher. They’re having fun right now.”

“Oh good,” said Samui. “Your suggestion on the sign and nudity must’ve worked, then.” They had helped Nii paint the sign that afternoon so the characters were nice and pretty. Nii had then snuck into Mina’s kitchen before she returned home from teaching. Nii had brought along a bottle of massage oil, and left behind her clothes.

Omoi grunted as he demonstrated how to do cartwheels on top of the newly-fallen snow without falling through. Show off. “I hope this means she’ll finally move out of our apartment.”

In addition to the pheromones that Nii and her partner were exuding, Tsume also smelled Yamato’s blood. But there wasn’t a lot, so that was good, and it wasn’t like there were any living enemies anymore. Probably just slipped on something.

oOoOoOo

“Shut up,” Yamato said, his face red, before Kakashi could say anything. “Yes, I slipped and fell on my own branch. It was icy. So yes, we’re going to have to practice on ice when we get back home so this doesn’t happen again when we’re fighting enemies, even though there were currently no enemies to be fighting when I slipped on the branch. And no, you’re not going to go easy on me, and I know that you’re not going to let me forget about this for the rest of my life.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Kakashi said, looking annoyed that he didn’t get to say anything.

Hotaru smiled sadly. “You guys make me miss my Genin team.”

oOoOoOo

The little village, barely more than hamlet, was named Obihiro. It was two days’ travel in good summer weather from Shikotan. Pushing hard, the team reached it in three and a half days. In order to avoid suspicion and not alert the locals, Kakashi and Yamato had left behind the gear that identified them as Konoha ANBU with their other two teammates, who were busy accompanying two rambunctious toddlers, a cranky old mednin, a talking ninken, and a legendary Sannin back to Konoha. Everyone wore their forehead protectors, and carried the missive from the Raikage that grudgingly granted them permission to come closer to the Hidden Village.

This particular valley received more wind than the others, which blew the snow away to occasionally expose the dried grass that the herders wintered their yaks on.

“So, now we just park ourselves and wait for Tsume to join us,” Hotaru said.

Yamato looked disdainfully at the cave that Hotaru had selected, after alerting the village’s mayor of why they were in the vicinity. “I could make us a more comfortable place to stay.” Yamato really didn’t do well in caves – too similar to Orochimaru’s secret layer, Kakashi figured, even if the layers of earth kept the sky far away from Yamato. He sidled up to his brother and draped a heavy arm around Yamato’s shoulders.

“We don’t want to scare the locals. Why, what would they think if they saw a towering tree where none stood before?”

Yamato narrowed his eyes in challenge – he knew Kakashi’s weak spots. “I can make the floor really soft to sleep on.”

Kakashi hesitated. He scraped a booted foot against the rough stone, and then looked at Hotaru. “The locals will get over their scare,” he said. “We really should be in the best shape when Mom gets here, because who knows what shape _she’ll_ be in.” Although he was aware of her current shape, given that he could smell her just fine, and there were too many pheromones and fun being produced for Kakashi to believe she was in any particular danger.

oOoOoOo

Tsume’s arm and torso had been healed enough by the medics that she could enjoy the sex with Killer B. As they rolled together on the sleeping mat, sheets tangled around sweaty limbs, as pleasure swirled with chakra and a presence of another creature – just beyond the realm of touching – Tsume felt happy and wholesome.

She arched her back as she rode him hard enough to make her hips ache. His hands never stopped moving as they roamed her skin, caressing and stroking. Killer A was as attentive a lover as he was a fighter. He wasn’t as experienced as she was, but he learned fast and listened well, touching her where she asked, moderating pressure if too much or not enough.

It was a rare opportunity for her to share physical intimacy without it turning into some sort of head game or mission. The nights in Kumo were simply about enjoying a fun romp with a handsome, well-built man with admirable stamina and an eagerness to make her enjoy herself as much as he clearly enjoyed her.

oOoOoOo

“I think we need more blankets,” Kakashi grumbled, trying not to shiver.

“I think we need to build a bigger fire,” Yamato said, even though they wouldn’t.

The two men sent Hotaru a resentful glare, since she was using her circulating kikaichu to stay warm. She was seated in a corner of the tree hollow not too far from them, almost in a meditative state, with her face relaxed and content. After a moment of no reaction from her, the two shifted their seats until they were pressed against each other. After a moment, unsatisfied still with the inability to get warm, Kakashi summoned Pakkun.

“Want to share warmth?” Kakashi asked.

Pakkun looked even unhappier than he normally did. “You brought me unwillingly to this frozen wasteland because you want a hug?” He pointed a paw at Yamato.” Isn’t that why you have him?”

Yamato shifted his seat, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t want a hug.”

“Sure you do,” Pakkun said. “And if you _really_ wanted to be warm, you’d’ve invited Bull, not me.” He narrowed his eyes and studied Kakashi closely.

“I can invite the whole crowd,” Kakashi offered.

“And clearly you haven’t been eating like you should.” Pakkun turned his eyes to Yamato. “You should make Kakashi eat more. It would make Tsume-san very happy.”

Yamato gave pause to that, then he glared sideways at Kakashi. “Wait a minute… that’s right! You haven’t been sneaking bites off my supplies like you normally do!”

Now that the focus of Yamato’s fussing had shifted from the currently-distant Tsume in all her unknown glory to Kakashi in the substantial here and now, Kakashi was beginning to regret summoning Pakkun.

And then Hotaru piped up from her corner. “He doesn’t even finish _his_ rations, Yamato.”

Kakashi tried to sink through the floor. Yamato just tightened his control over the wood, and leaned forward to study Kakashi critically. “I haven’t noticed anything because we’re both wearing extra padding with the cold, but you do look like you’ve dropped weight.”

“He has,” Pakkun said. “He told Hana-chan just three weeks ago that he only weighed fifty-nine kilos.”

“ _You_ told her that, not me. I never confirmed that was my weight. And you are no longer my best friend,” Kakashi told Pakkun sternly.

Pakkun’s sad expression didn’t change. “You didn’t deny it was your weight, because Hana-chan would’ve smelled the lie. And having personally raised you myself for the last fifteen years, I like to think of myself more as a father figure. Fathers aren’t meant to be best friends.” Pakkun scratched behind an ear. “The Inuzuka clan always seems to have a surplus of extra mothers, so I figured there was nothing wrong if you had any extra father.”

Kakashi was unable to fit in a retort about the fathers in his life, because Yamato started fussing up another storm, just as Kakashi knew he would.

oOoOoOo

Tsume was beginning to realize that Omoi had the greatest imagination ever. “And then, the oceans would dry up, and what would happen to all the sharks and whales and the people living on tropical islands?”

He was also living proof of what happened when someone would make a mountain out of a molehill. In this case, he actually seemed to make an entire mountain range out of an innocent pile of slug poop. It was an impressive trait.

“Gosh, you might as well wonder what would happen if all the stars fell out of the sky.” Tsume ignored the glares that Samui and Karui gave her, as Omoi began speculating on what would happen if all the stars did fall out of the sky. Tsume was making rice balls one-handed, and Omoi was wrapping them with bacon, which Tsume had never tried before. They were too far away from the sea to have supplies that Tsume was used to working with, but she’d always been able to figure out which ingredients paired well together because of her olfaction. In another life, she figured that she’d make an awesome chef if her career as a ninja had never panned out.

Nii and Killer B were off sparring – although it felt more like a near-constant earthquake underfoot – and had left Killer B’s team to supervise her. Mina, sadly, didn’t have the same level of energy as Nii, and had decided that an eight hour sex marathon was more than enough for her, so now Nii was burning off excess energy with Killer B. It had the added bonus of knocking loose potential avalanches before people wandered across the high-risk fields.

In the twenty minutes that Tsume had been left in the cares of the three teens, she had commandeered their kitchen once again, and gave all three of them various tasks that she couldn’t perform. Karui had been chopping the vegetables as ordered, but Tsume was beginning to realize that maybe arming Karui with a sharp, pointy object was probably not such a good idea.

“Once these are wrapped, we’ll pop them into the oven.” Then Tsume looked sadly at the mushed up pile of turnips and rutabagas. She wasn’t even sure how Karui managed to mush them up when they hadn’t even been cooked yet. Turnips were _dense._

“I’m not good at cooking,” Karui mumbled, holding the knife defensively.

The cabbage rolls that Samui shaped looked and smelled edible. 

Tsume scratched her head and reconsidered Karui’s plate. “I think you’re holding the knife wrong. That’s a good way to get your wrist broken if you tried to stab someone in the torso, because the blade could deflect and kick back if it hits a rib.” Teaching Kabuto and Kakashi how to cook hadn’t been all that difficult – Kabuto simply thought in terms of chemistry and how to balance the different components so it wouldn’t blow up in his face, and Kakashi soaked up information like a thirsty little sponge, using his nose to find the most flattering pairing of ingredients, just like she did. Yamato and Hana had to be taught differently, and they became more successful in cooking when Tsume eventually figured out how to explain cooking in terms of killing, like the Academy.

Karui’s expression seemed to lose some of the look of wounded pride as she reconsidered the way she held her knife. “Well, its balance isn’t the same as a kunai.”

“Kunai won’t always be available, especially in a pinch.” Tsume hefted an empty wok in her left hand, waving it slightly in the air. “My Aunt Natsumi once taught me how to kill a grown man with a wok, just in case I was caught flat-footed at a campsite.” And boy did that demonstration entertain the Swords(wo)man of the Mist. The Swordsmen hadn’t been as impressed, since it wouldn’t produce enough blood for their liking.

Omoi eyed the wok with interest. “How _do_ you kill a grown man with a wok?”

“Apply enough force when whacking him in the skull. But you need to turn the wok sideways because air velocity will catch and cushion your blow. You want to cave in the bone with the first strike.”

“Brute force, then,” Samui said. “There’s nothing really special in killing a man with _that_. Now, if you told me you could kill someone with embroidery floss, you might be on to something there.”

“It’s made from silk, isn’t it?” Tsume asked with a shrug. “Easy enough to form a garrote.”

All three of the chuunin exchanged a look. Samui regarded Tsume with narrowed eyes – she wasn’t alpha, not like the way that Nii struck her in a rather feline manner, but Samui definitely seemed to be the one that the other two deferred to when Nii or Killer B weren’t around. “Tsume-san doesn’t appear to have any problem making weapons out of anything that’s available.”

“I _am_ a weapon,” Tsume said as she set the wok down. Different voices that told her different things over the years flitted through her mind; most words were blurred and indistinct while some voices were very clear and uniform, but the feelings remained the same. She briefly wondered if this was the sort of thing that was a Secret, but eh. This could still be an acceptable conversation with someone that she was kinda-maybe-sorta unofficially apprenticing long-distance. (Trying to think through what the Raikage had pulled on her was headache-inducing in all its confusion, so Tsume figured that she was better off trying to play along with the matter until she could speak to the Hokage.) She was already in pretty deep after the Raikage snatched up everyone’s notes from her impromptu sex education, and hurried off to have a discussion with his Academy Board. She also briefly wondered how such could be worked into her Bingo Book entry. _Best captured alive and placed in an academic role surrounded by easily-influenced teens who haven’t completed transition through puberty yet._

“That’s what being a kunoichi or a shinobi is about. Each of us is a weapon for our village, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. And anything that I use becomes an extension of myself as a weapon.”

“But,” began Omoi as he got that look on his face that indicated he was going to go into another mountain-range-out-of-slug-poop, “if you’re a weapon and you’re broken, how good is the secondary weapon? What if that breaks, too?”

Tsume flicked the edge of her finger against his nose – not enough that the claw drew blood, but it did leave a stinging welt that made Omoi cover his nose protectively and angle his shoulders away from her. “Haven’t you heard? Inuzuka are animals, and the wounded, cornered animal is the deadliest and most desperate of all. Never underestimate your opponent even when they appear to be wounded and down for the count.”

And that, Tsume supposed, as she turned back to the cooking, was something that many ninja appeared to be willfully ignorant of. All ninja were weapons – bred, born, created, and otherwise – as much as the jinchuuriki were. The only difference in them was that the jinchuuriki could cut deeper, wider, and faster with their tailed demons. Dead was dead, though – whether a person died when their skull was bashed in, or exsanguinated by a thousand paper cuts. “Let’s get these finished up,” she said over her shoulder. “That way we’ll have a decent lunch when we leave Kumo tomorrow.” Tsume’s final healing was scheduled for later in the evening; the medics estimated that she would be well enough for long-distance traveling without worsening her current condition. With fully restored chakra-levels, Tsume felt ready to undertake the journey and do her own extensive healing. Anything would help the constant plague of burning/prickling/crushing pain that constantly wrapped around her entire hand and forearm.

But she wasn’t going to think about the pain. She also wasn’t going to consider how very easily she could slaughter the Kumo chuunin she was surrounded with if they met on a battlefield and they interfered with her mission, or how they were young enough to be her own children. Samui and Omoi were still beloved by their parents, while Karui had struggled to find a family that she could accept before getting placed with Killer B’s team.

Tsume was much a weapon as any of the jinchuuriki (although slightly less devastating), and she went where her Hokage ordered and instincts guided her.

Right now, in the warm, homey kitchen where she could see the white-blanketed surroundings with beautiful glittering statues from the window, Tsume was only going to think of today.


	37. Delta Years - Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The best-laid plans often go awry because of mice, men, and my case - COVID. I'm pretty sure I don't have it, but I was exposed, so now I'm on quarantine while waiting for my test results to come back. Trying to work from home. With three small children... I'll work on posting the first chapter of the Beta Years after I finish posting this.

The Konoha Academy graduation took place every six months – mid-winter and early-summer. Summer was the time in which entire teams graduated at once, different persons and characters balancing each other out in what the Hokage and his chosen advisors – different academy instructors – hoped would be a successful partnership. Mid-winter was when partial genin teams, whose members had either died or successfully became chuunin, were reconfigured and padded with carefully chosen candidates who managed to graduate early.

Teams created in the mid-winter had to be more closely scrutinized, partly due to mixing a green genin into a more experienced team, but mostly because of the introduction of an unknown into usually volatile team dynamics that had already been disrupted by the displacement of one or two original team members.

And in the case of this batch, many genin whose teams had already been torn asunder by the Kyuubi, added resentment of the introduction of inexperienced greenies who knew nothing of warfare, of the stench of death and destruction. In the restructuring of teams, Hiruzen had tried to keep such genin teamed together, but there were still a few partial teams that had no hope of becoming chuunin without a third teammate for the chuunin exams.

“It’s a poor bunch that’s up for evaluation,” Nara Shikaku grumble as he pillowed his head in his arms and glared at the stack of paperwork that Hiruzen had yet to split up. When it came to rearranging and reassigning mid-winter teams, Hiruzen had to take consideration and advice of his advisors, the Head Jounin, and the different jounin sensei who would lose or gain team members. His advisors were the esteemed Elders – i.e., the original Team Tobirama — and the remaining living members of Squad Tobirama. Hiruzen estimated by this time next year, Kagami would be joining Tobirama and Torifu. Which would be a shame, because Kagami and Torifu had always been the gentlest souls.

It was rather horrifying to realize that Danzo, Homura, and Koharu had far more in common with each other philosophy-wise than they did with Hiruzen. _I’m going to be vastly outnumbered if I can’t find someone like Shikaku or Sakumo to take Kagami’s place._

Koharu, sipping her tea and looking out the window at the Academy grounds, was the only other person currently present. Homura was delayed for family reasons, and unlikely to come when he was too busy with the birth of his first grandson. Hiruzen could appreciate the delay, as he was also awaiting the birth of his first grandchild, which was due to happen any week now. His poor daughter looked ready to pop like a balloon…

Danzo and Kagami were due to show, but Kagami was always running late, and Danzo was supposed to accompany him this time.

“We work,” Hiruzen said to Shikaku, “with what we have, and we make the best of everything. Even the clumsiest, most rusted blade can be cleaned and sharpened into something lethal.”

Koharu snorted in amusement. “Summer of ’15, Tobirama explaining why even the dead-last has its place in life.” Koharu thought in terms of _group_ , rather than _singular_ , which made her invaluable when it came to evaluating teams and the Village, but she wasn’t particularly good at looking at individuals.

Hiruzen felt a little self-conscious as he rubbed his nose. “The Second taught us many things, although the truth is Natsumi was the one who originally came up with that.”

Koharu snorted once more, this time with a mingling of exasperation and irritation. Koharu had always preferred that life be separated and sorted into neat little boxes, and had little appreciation for things and people who wouldn’t accommodate her. Natsumi had never fit into the boxes, although Tobirama had tried often enough for the two to work together, perhaps hoping that because they were both female they could somehow get along. It had been a futile hope, as their personalities clashed from the very beginning. It was amusing the first few years, as long as you didn’t get dragged into the fight to choose sides.

Shikaku tilted his head to press his face away from the light. “This bunch is going to need a _lot_ of help.”

Hiruzen knew what he was working with for the winter graduation – the dregs of the genin, the ones that clung to being ninja because they had failed to become chuunin, to become better ninja, and the only thing that held them together was the bitter rags of their pride and fierce love for Konoha. Hiruzen personally felt that tools were always better when properly shaped by the correct hands. The God of Shinobi was also the Professor, and Hiruzen had always secretly wanted to be an Academy teacher more than he wanted to be the Hokage. Every student learned in their own way – if a shinobi hadn’t learned, it was because they hadn’t been taught in a manner best suited to their abilities.

_A place for everyone, and everyone in their place._

Hiruzen thought of something that Sakumo had once told him years ago, when he had been on the verge of losing his mind and no one – least of all Hiruzen – had seen or recognized the signs. _(“We all look for that place we belong. Some of us are much more obvious about it, like Tsume. Others hide such a longing so deeply that they don’t even realize what they’ve spent a lifetime searching for.”_ )

As Hiruzen rested his hand on the stack of paperwork, he wondered how many of these misfit genin were looking for a place they belonged, still trying to be wanted by someone. A team was often the best and the worst thing that happened to such people – it either became that place of belonging, the one thing they needed most in life, or it became their ruin as they watched their team break apart, either through death or success, and that place of belonging _left_ them behind.

Summer matching was always easier, lighthearted, free of such guilty baggage and doubts. In summer, Hiruzen could look at the team matching with hope and all the fresh newness in life.

In winter, he looked at the failures – some of them were broken, others still hopeful, and every one vulnerable.

He was aware of Koharu moving from the window and seating herself at the left corner of his desk. “You always have a faraway, regretful look on your face every winter that we do this,” she said as she set her empty teacup on the table.

“Winter has that effect on me,” Hiruzen admitted. He smiled for her benefit, because he was always the one who looked on the bright side of things, who always tried to see the good in everyone. Sometimes he hated how he had to be the positive personality, just because he was surrounded by so many negative personalities. Even Shikaku was given to grumbling more and laughing less.

_I need to surround myself with more sunny personalities._ Good thing that Jiraiya was returning to the village this week, and even better that he wasn’t returning in the wake of some recent scandal. And if he was lucky, maybe Hiruzen could talk Jiraiya into sharing the most recent chapters of his current work-in-progress. He had also read the first five chapters, and he just _dying_ to know if Tekka would be escaping the dungeon he was currently trapped in while suffering from the poisoning from the mysterious Madame Gaiduko. Jiraiya wasn’t above killing off his main protagonists, and Hiruzen had grown rather fond of Tekka, who had started out as a minor character in _Icha Icha Frenzy._

Hiruzen’s latest train of through was disrupted when his office door swung open. Kagami walked through without support, looking only slightly breathless and a little pale. Danzo was equally sedate with his pace, the cane clicking with every swing of his right leg.

After the two had seated themselves – Danzo to the right corner, opposite of Koharu, which so often mirrored their differences in life – and Kagami in the center, directly across from Hiruzen, forever mediating between the newest generation and the old guard.

Hiruzen sadly reflected, as he listened with chakra-enhanced hearing to the distant burbling of water in Kagami’s lungs, and the gurgle of fluids in Kagami’s heart, that this was the last time he would ever see this formation. And because Kagami smiled as much as Hiruzen did, because Kagami manufactured a comforting presence that lured people into trusting and believing in him, Hiruzen plastered his own genuine smile in place and pushed the stack of paperwork towards the center. “We have a difficult afternoon ahead of us, but I feel confident that we will do right with everyone in the end.”

Kagami returned the smile, placid and serene, content in life and with his approaching death.

They distributed the stacks, first of the advanced Academy students who had chosen to take the early exams and succeeded in passing, and second of the languishing genin still in need of replacement teammates. Academy students didn’t know if they passed or not in the winter; they were told they failed if there wasn’t a suitable placement for them. _(“A little bit of bitter disappointment builds character,”_ Danzo had explained the first time they suggested telling the unpaired Academy students that they just failed the testing despite passing with flying colors, and Hiruzen had been outvoted by the remainder of his council.)

Shikaku straightened up and flipped through the Academy records. “This group is promising…” Then he stopped, eyeing the pages. He set them down and folded his hands. “Tsume isn’t aware that Hana and Kabuto chose to take the early exam, is she.” His voice was flat – it was a statement, rather than a question, but Hiruzen chose to answer.

“I encouraged them to while she was gone. I think they’d be of more use in this batch than in the summer batch.” He had great plans for those two. Particularly Kabuto, because Hiruzen felt the more they surrounded Kabuto with people who loved Konoha, the more the scars of Orochimaru’s influence would fade. He also had a clear idea of who he wanted to pair Kabuto and Hana up with. There were a still a few genin who had lost their teammates in the Kyuubi’s attack and they seemed to stall in life and career. Hiruzen hoped that by dragging such teammates into Tsume’s chaotic circle of influence, where fear towards an innocent human being wouldn’t be tolerated, it would help the genin heal.

Now, if only he could spin this in such a way that his council would just work with him…

oOoOoOo

Leaving and traveling away from Kumo was uneventful. Tsume kept imagining that someone was going to come running up from behind to inform Killer B that the Raikage had changed his mind and had decided to keep Tsume after all – since Konoha had failed at making sure that Tsume stayed out of trouble, they may as well keep her and her sons, right?

But every passing kilometer took Tsume, Killer B, and his team further away with no scent of pursuit coming after them. On the second night, when they rested in a hollow that Omoi had created out of the snow with a carefully-controlled futun jutsu (it was impressive – who knew that ice holes were comfortably warm?), Tsume allowed herself to relax. Samui and Karui both made sure that Tsume was bundled tight in layers and layers of warm woolies, which made Tsume smell like a musty yak and look like a roly-poly snowman with abominable hair. In such tight, restrictive layers, it would’ve been hard to make an escape from the team. She also didn’t have to waste the effort in circulating her chakra to stay warm, so she had to admit that there was a purpose for all the layers. It left her with more to slowly work on knitting her bones together.

Even though she missed the quiet presence of Darui, Tsume had to admire the workings of Team Killer B. Everyone knew their place and role, each fulfilling tasks that had been decided and agreed upon long before she entered the scene. It was nostalgic, reminding her of Sakumo, Kokoro, and Kushina back when they had been a fully-functioning team. Of course, Team Killer B also didn’t also have five large ninken and one toddler tagalong who decided to run away to the circus with a hot-tempered A-rank stallion named Juubi along for the ride. The tone of Killer B and Tsume’s relationship changed – here he was the quintessential sensei, attentive to his students, and he treated her as professionally and as friendly as he had before they had reached Kumo. Tsume wasn’t disappointed – she was rather relieved to have the boundaries of temporary-allies back into place now that she was returning home.

Ah, home. Home that smelled of trees, that was warm and generous and open, far away from the cold wastrel of the far reaches of Lightning. Tsume missed Konoha the longer she stayed away. The only other time she had ever missed Konoha this much was when she was in the brothel. All the other times she was with precious persons who made everywhere seem like a little piece of home. Now, she didn’t even have a scroll of a fellow Konoha nin’s body to keep her company.

It was time to go home.

oOoOoOo

“Aren’t you bored with that yet?” Yamato asked as Kakashi once again flipped through the carefully bound chapters that Jiraiya had given Kakashi before they left.

Kakashi gasped in mock-horror and held the papers to his chest, as if sheltering them from Yamato’s scorn. “Never!” he declared with a vigorous shake of his head. “They have to be reread to appreciate the depths of Jiraiya’s masterpiece!” As Yamato’s face set in skepticism, Kakashi leaned forward with a maniacal gleam in his uncovered eye. His breath stirred the hairs on Yamato’s forehead as he spoke. “It’s like fuuinjutsu – there are layers of intricate, subtle details that enrich your experience.” He caressed the papers gently. “It’s like being with a woman. You can do the down and dirty and be done in a flash the first time. But the second time? Ah, the second time is where you get to explore, to notice all the details, how the woman reacts positively or not to your touch…” Kakashi settled back on his heels as his mask wrinkled with what was probably a goofy smile.

Yamato frowned as he considered Kakashi’s words. Then he realized that Kakashi was trying to distract him once again. Well, if Kakashi wanted Yamato to focus on something different from his poor appetite and recent weight loss, very well. There were plenty of other things Yamato could focus on that would make Kakashi equally uncomfortable. Yamato had learned much about being an annoying younger brother from many women who were used to being the annoying younger sister. “I thought these books were supposed to be eighteen-and-over. You’re not eighteen yet.”

Kakashi coughed pointedly into his fist. “I’m mature for my age. And I’ll be eighteen when it’s _officially_ published.”

Yamato briefly remembered the week before Kakashi left for Fang Country for his last one-man mission, where Gai managed to successfully talk Kakashi into seeing who could eat the most dango, and Kakashi ate so much that he vomited all over the service counter. “And since when do you know what it’s like to be with a woman?”

Instead of the embarrassed backpedaling Yamato expected (he didn’t know _why,_ Kakashi tended to be rather unashamed and unabashed, every bit as Inuzuka as his mother and foster-mother), Kakashi eyed Yamato as if seeing him for the first time. Then he nudged Yamato and winked. “Ahhhh. Are you getting curious about the opposite sex yet? I was wondering when that was going to happen, or if I was going to need to dig up someone else to discuss playing the same team with you.”

Curses – the table had been flipped on him! Yamato did his best not to squirm, especially when he acutely felt the presence of Hotaru, just on the opposite end of the tree hut. “Does Mom know that you read Jiraiya’s work?”

Kakashi sidled forward – which was impressive enough, given the fact that they were both seated on the floor – and slung a heavy arm around Yamato’s shoulders. It almost felt like a noose. “Dearest brother, Mom was sharing _The Adventures of the Gutsy Shinobi_ with me even before you were born. She is an avid fan, after all. And don’t get me started on the not-so-family-friendly retelling of the Whirklpool Sirens that Mom decided to share with me two years ago. Besides, would _I_ do anything that Mom would disapprove of?”

That last didn’t even deserve the dignity of a response, especially when Yamato could hear Hotaru snickering. “But is she aware that you’re reading _porn_?”

Kakashi gasped again in mock-horror, once more clutching the papers to his chest. “This isn’t as _base_ as _porn!_ It’s _erotica_. It’s an entirely different class from _porn_ all together. For one thing,” his tone switched to lecturing, “it has _plot._ Furthermore Jiraiya-sama had a rich cast of colorful characters who come alive with your imagination. Here, I’ve got the first chapter somewhere. I’ll show you what I mean…” Kakashi momentarily stopped when Hotaru pointedly cleared her throat.

“I’m not going to quibble over the age difference of seventeen and eighteen, Kakashi-san, but I _will_ quibble over the difference of fourteen and eighteen.”

Yamato was never so happy to be so young.

oOoOoOo

It took four days of steady travel with cooperative weather, even after being taught how to travel on top of the snow, before Killer B, team, and guest reached the village of Obihiro. There was a gigantic tree that stood in the middle of a wintering pasture, bare of any leaves.

“This wasn’t here the last time we came through.” Killer B eyed the tree, as if contemplating the many ways in which it could be readily chopped down and turned into a much-more olfactory-friendly fuel source.

Kakashi peered over the edge of one thick limb, far above their heads. “I wouldn’t recommend getting rid of it. The locals have decided that this is a personification of their local fertility god. They keep leaving food offerings at its base.”

Yamato shimmied up to Kakashi’s side. “If I never see a wedge of yak cheese, it’ll be too soon.”

Kakashi turned slightly to Yamato without removing his gaze from the Kumo nins. “I like yak cheese.”

“Funny how you wouldn’t eat my share. Not even Pakkun liked it.”

Kakashi gave Yamato’s shoulder a pat that was clearly condescending. “Good source of calcium. It’s perfect for growing boys like you.”

“You are growing, too. You should even try growing sideways for once, you beanpole.” Yamato waved. “Hi, mom. Glad to see you’ve arrived in almost the same condition as you left.” His face filled with the concern that had flooded his scent the moment he saw Tsume. “You are okay, aren’t you?”

“I did try to stay out of trouble.” Tsume turned to Killer B. “Thanks for everything. Really.” He cocked his head to the side; Tsume saw a shadowed reflection of herself in his eyes, stuffed in lightly-colored furs with her hair sticking out everywhere from beneath the rabbit fur cap that Nii had given her as a parting gift and thank-you for the suggestion that finally got Nii successfully laid. ( _“So you don’t lose your ears to frostbite.”)_ “I know that circumstances weren’t the greatest, and they probably won’t improve because, you know…” She shrugged. “Konoha and Kumo, but I won’t ever hate Kumo.”

Hotaru joined Yamato and Kakashi on their limb, her hands tucked into her pockets and the kikaichu quiet.

Killer B considered Tsume a moment longer, and then struck a pose. It was easy to imagine the sparkles that surrounded Killer B as he raised one arm into the air, curling it to highlight the bulge of his bicep and outline of veins across the back of his hand. “Konoha ninja // you’re my brother’s delegate // never forget us!”

Karui covered her mouth as her face burned red with embarrassment, Samui covered her eyes with a sigh, and Omoi clapped both hands over his ears.

“Back to the haiku?” Tsume asked with a grin.

“Since you’re leaving us // I can return to normal // good luck with your sons.”

“Thanks. Safe travel to you and your team, and if we meet again… I hope it will be under good circumstances.”

“Never forget,” Killer B said, as he ruffled Karui’s hair with affection. They left immediately after that, running on top of the snow to make good time before the sunset and the temperatures plummeted. Kakashi, Yamato and Hotaru joined Tsume on the ground.

“We should get started, too,” Hotaru said. “I don’t want to stay here now that the Kumo nin know where we’re camping. Are you up for a run?”

Tsume checked her chakra stored and mentally catalogued her current physical status. “Yeah, I can keep going for another few hours, as long as I’m not pushed hard.”

“Good. Because when we’re to the point of safety, you and I are going to be writing a very long list of details that the Hokage is going to want.”

oOoOoOo

Konoha, thanks to indoor plumbing, closed sewer systems, and wood-fueled fires, didn’t smell as bad as some of the places that Tsume had visited in the very recent past. Filled with all the familiar scents of home and comfort, Tsume was undeniably grateful to make it back in (mostly) one piece – okay, one gigantic walking throb due to being in multiple little pieces, but they would heal. She let the different scents play across her mind as she sat in the straight-backed chair. It was better than feeling like that one time when the Hokage demanded an explanation from Team Sakumo as to why they figured that releasing a honey badger and hive of angry hornets on the enemy encampment was such a good idea when they were supposed to rescue the hostages. Especially when the hostages demanded to be returned to their abductors.

The Hokage set aside the neatly bullet-pointed intelligence report that she and Hotaru had created with numbers, locations, strengths and weaknesses, and dismissed everyone by Tsume. Hotaru raised her hands in a _no_ gesture when Tsume tried to return Minato’s forehead protector.

“Keep it,” Hotaru said, sidestepping and foiling Tsume’s attempt to stuff it in one of Hotaru’s pockets. “Give it to Naruto when he’s of age. It will mean more coming from you than from me.”

After her sons and Hotaru had filed out of the room, Tsume fought down the desire to dive out the window and run back to her other children. “Er.”

The Hokage folded his hands and regarded Tsume patiently. “So. You jumped off a _cliff_. A very, _very_ , tall cliff.”

Tsume tried not to squirm and look guilty. “In my defense, Hokage-sama, I couldn’t see the bottom because of the cloudbank. And she reminded me of Anko, and they were my teammates at the moment, and you just can’t abandon your teammates.”

The Hokage leaned back, amusement shining in his eyes. “It appears to have earned you good will from Kumo. I can’t think of too many other reasons how you would wind up as their preferred permanent diplomatic delegation from Konoha, especially when you’re not exactly the diplomatic sort.”

Tsume tried scratching her cast. Her skin felt dry and itchy, so now she needed to figure out how to squirt lotion up the cast and rub it around.

The Hokage sighed and pressed a hand against his forehead. He considered her through his parted fingers. “ _Now_ what did you do?”

Tsume furtively looked around. “You positive that no one’s listening in on us?”

“I’m sure your nose could tell you better than I could.”

“Right. Okay, so uh…” She managed to pry the Kumo forehead protector free from within the uttermost edge of her cast where she had the most room, and set it on the desk. She still felt its presence, solid and real, against her skin, even though the forehead protector rested between her and the Hokage. “So, uh, apparently I also got made an unofficial Kumo nin. This doesn’t make me a traitor, does it?” Tsume couldn’t say that she was used to seeing the Hokage flummoxed (unless that Hokage had been the Fourth) but it was better than the long-suffered expression he often wore when confronted with her latest shenanigans. “I swear that my allegiance and loyalty to Konohagakure remains unchanged!”

“How did you….”The Hokage twitched and desperately looked like he wanted to smoke. “Maybe this is an explanation best started from the beginning.”

Tsume hunched in her chair. “Well, according to Kumo tradition, you’re responsible for the person whose life you save. And since I saved the life of Killer B’s apprentice, I guess the Raikage figured that it would be emotionally easier for the girl if he made me an unofficial Kumo nin, especially since her father was killed because he was part of the team Danzo and Minato and I rescued Kushina from during the Second War, and I might’ve torn his spine free.” She scratched her head; her scalp was itchy, and she felt acutely aware of how she no longer had any kikaichu hiding in her hair. “So, if we’re well-met outside our respected villages, I think I’m just kinda supposed to take Karui under my wing and be like a long-distance mentor or something. And maybe I should write letters to her? I dunno. I already revamped their sex ed.”

“You revamped their what?” The Hokage looked upward, as if silently pleading with the gods for patience. “This is not starting from the very beginning!”

“This doesn’t make me a traitor to Konoha, does it? I don’t _feel_ like a traitor!” Tsume wondered if there was a distinct emotion that went with being a traitor. Guilt? (She was feeling plenty of that.) Relief? Fear? Did Orochimaru feel anything in particular? If she became a missing nin and was forced on the lam, she could take advantage of her situation to hunt down and ask Orochimaru. It might even get her into good graces with the Hokage again, if she somehow managed to drag Orochimaru back to Konoha and traded him for the reinstatement of her status as a kunoichi in good standing. It was just underhanded enough that even Orochimaru would appreciate the irony.

“Do you have any intention to reveal secrets to our enemies?”

She adamantly shook her head. “No, sir!”

The Hokage considered Tsume for a moment, and then dug around a desk drawer before pulling his pipe and tobacco out. She wrinkled her nose in distaste before he even started packing the pipe. “Of all the ninja in this village whose loyalty I would question, the Inuzuka are the _least_ of my worries, especially their clan head.”

The pinched sensation between her shoulder blades eased away slightly, like a heavy weight was lifted from her back. “That’s good. That’s… thank you, sir. I think feel better now.”

“This _could_ be to our advantage. Kumo is very difficult to obtain Intel on because of their distance, and they are not an enemy to be underestimated, even if we are currently at a very fragile peace. The fact that you have _two_ unexpected ins could reap us even richer Intel than your single visit. If you’re supposed to be writing these letters and can play up your ignorance and simplicity, it would be fairly easy to get innocuous details that we could find useful. Let’s start your report from the beginning though, so I know what we’re working with.”

Tsume was happy to oblige, although her report – as they so often were because of her brain injury – was meandering, long, backpedaled several times so she could mention something she forgot earlier, and sometimes contained observational tangents that only loosely had anything to do with her mission. The Hokage was used to Tsume’s reports, and used them as an opportunity to relax in his chair, smoke, and drink tea without interruptions.

“It almost sounded like a trap,” Tsume said after she finally managed to adequately explain how she became an unofficial Kumo nin.

“No doubt he intended to make use of your simplicity.” The Hokage was one of the few who didn’t make Tsume feel bad about her difficulty with complex situations and ideas. “Let the Raikage believe that he has placed you in a difficult position. Write the letters – I’ll review them, and if they pass muster, you can send them. If not, you get the joy of rewriting them.”

Tsume never had a pen pal before. She wondered if it would be any fun. “I guess I can do that.”

“Now, what’s this about revamping their sex ed?”

She couldn’t keep the outrage out of her voice. “Omoi thought that chlamydia is a flower, and Karui didn’t know what the clitoris is!” The Hokage sunk down in his seat, looking like he regretted the question as Tsume explained how she felt obligated to ensure that these teenagers (“mixed teams living under the same roof and they weren’t even aware of _condom use_ , that’s a teenaged pregnancy disaster waiting to happen!” she declared, ignoring the fact that she had gotten pregnant when she was barely sixteen years old, although it had been a very deliberate move on her part, with all the necessary paternity paperwork already filled out and awaiting a signature) were fully aware of their choices and how they could get into, or out of, said choices.

The Hokage hastily redirected Tsume back to reporting on everything else that wasn’t her impromptu sex ed that the Raikage decided to co-opt.

After Tsume finished the rest of her report by pointing out that there was probably more information in the report that she and Hotaru had made, the Hokage reluctantly called an end to their meeting. From the smell of it, there were several impatient messengers who weren’t important enough to interrupt their meeting waiting just outside the door, and she wanted to go home to her family.

“On that note, I wish to be the first to congratulate you – Kabuto and Hana both graduated the Academy early.”

“Oh, good for them! Which teams did they get assigned to?”

The Hokage looked sly as he snuck another puff. “I understand that Oyubi invited them to her place for dinner tonight. You and your team made good time back, but you still need to be seen by our medics, so I think it will be a pleasant surprise for everyone all around if you just find out tonight.”

Tsume stared at the Hokage for a moment, and then made a point of sniffing the air. “Ah, it appears that Hana is on the same team as Shimura Takumi and Uchiha Itachi. That’s… that’s a quiet team.” Tsume almost felt sorry for Hana, but figured that this would be a good way of getting Itachi to look over her accounts without dragging all the ledgers over to the Uchiha grounds. “I didn’t know their team had an opening.”

The Hokage sighed. “You do realize that there’s a reason no one ever throws you a surprise birthday party, right? The third team member had to drop out due to near-fatal injuries that she sustained in what should’ve been a routine mission.”

“I don’t really recognize the two with Kabuto.”

“Umino Iruka and Ura Mizuki. One is an orphan without a clan, and the second is from a civilian family. Their teammate as promoted to Chuunin at the last exam, and their original sensei was killed in a recent mission. I’ve pulled Namiashi Raido from guard duty to be their sensei.” He hesitated for a moment, and then set his pipe down. “Both Iruka and Mizuki lost family in the Kyuubi attack. I know that a new team member who’s the older brother to the jinchuuriki might be difficult for everyone at first, but I also think this will be a good opportunity for healing, and for acceptance.”

Tsume vaguely recalled Raido; he had been part of Minato’s elite guard when Minato became Hokage. She always figured that any guard of sorts (elite or otherwise) was superfluous for a Hokage, but no one had ever asked her opinion on such. Then she remembered how she had seen people casually engaging with Killer B and Nii in Kumo. The fear was minimal, the acceptance was warm, and people felt comfortable and safe despite being aware of the power and presence of both jinchuuriki.

She desperately wanted that for Naruto. She vividly remembered how much she wanted to be wanted when she was a child, back when Grandmother was alive, and how better her world became when Sakumo and Kakashi entered it. She wanted Naruto to _feel_ wanted –not just by clan, but by Village. “They’re Konoha, so that’s good enough for me. We’ll work through the ups and downs as they come, me and Naruto and everyone else.”

The Hokage flashed his teeth in a grateful smile. “It may not be easy, but I know my faith in you will not be in vain.”


	38. Beta Years - Chapter One

“You were supposed to _rescue_ the hostages.” Sarutobi Hiruzen gave the three teenaged girls, all on the brink of womanhood, and their sensei a long, stern look as he crossed his arms and rested them on the surface of his desk.

“We did,” Kushina insisted defensively. Her face was set with a stubborn expression – she also had several sticks and leaves tangled in her hair, which was unusual, because Tsume was the one who always looked like she got dragged backwards through a bramble bush. Kushina’s arms were also wrapped with several layers of bloody bandages.

Kokoro, to the left of Kushina, kept her face carefully blank of any emotions. She was seated in her wheelchair with a clumsily-knit blanket hiding her legs. Kokoro had recently taught herself knitting while memorizing the protocols in T&I. _(“I like to keep my hands busy, since they work better than my legs.”)_ She was the only one of the three girls who looked remotely groomed, although her face was smudged with dirt. Ever the silver-tongued of the trio, she said placidly, "There weren't any casualties or even serious, debilitating injuries to the hostages, our team, _or_ the kidnappers. I would say it was a very successful mission."

To the right of Kushina, Tsume fidgeted and managed to look guilty enough for all her teammates as she scratched a gigantic red welt on her lower right leg – it was just one gigantic red welt amongst many, many others. She looked like she had lost a fight with a patch of poison oak, and her usual dragged backwards through a bramble bush, which included multiple leaves, sticks, and dirt clods stuck to her wild hair.

“I,” began Sakumo in an even, reasonable voice, “would like to point out that the hostages _are_ free to make their own decisions upon safe recovery. It may not be the safest or wisest choice, but that _is_ their choice. That’s the difference between us, and the people who held them hostage, after all.” Sakumo had fewer red welts than Tsume, and some uncovered lacerations on his exposed forearms. He appeared to have gotten into a wrestling match with a wildcat.

“Gosh,” added Tsume with a squirm, “how were we supposed to know that the honey badger was going to be _that_ pissed off?”

Sakumo frowned down at her. “Language. We’re supposed to be polite with the Hokage, remember? How would you rephrase that more diplomatically?”

Tsume scratched behind her ear, and then she scratched a welt on her elbow. “Yeah, diplomacy, right, no choking anyone with an umbilical cord…” Ah yes, _that_ had been terribly undiplomatic of her. Hiruzen was glad that Sakumo had been working with Tsume on improving her language. “Gosh. How we were supposed to know that the honey badger was going to be really irritated when it landed? I mean, that thing was _enraged_ , and then the wasps started stinging everyone – including poor Mister Honey – and that made matters worse, so the next thing we knew, we were trying to rescue the hostages and kidnappers from Mister Honey _and_ the wasps.”

“Ah.” Hiruzen studied Tsume for a moment. Tsume scratched her neck. “I was wondering why you looked so… stung.” He had also wondered why he had received a permission request for adopting a _“cranky honey badger in need of a good home”_ a few minutes before their arrival. It hadn’t been signed, but he had a sneaking suspicion as to who was responsible for submitting the request. It wasn't quite as bad as the formal request he had received a few days ago – _in triplicate_ – from Kirigakure for permission to slay Sakumo's team the next time they crossed paths with Kiri nin.

“She decided to jump right in and help,” Sakumo said with pride. He affectionately ruffled her hair. “Tsume was very brave and elected to lead the wasps away from the innocent hostages. The bulk of the wasps wound up chasing her all the way to the creek.”

Tsume scratched the inside of her forearm. “I’m all right,” she insisted. “And I had help.” She looked apologetically at the Hokage. “Aunt Natsumi is currently working on my ninken. She said I can live with the misery and the, uh, what else did she say?”

“Consequences of your actions,” Kokoro and Kushina said in unison.

“Yeah, that. She said I could live with the consequences of my actions until our report is over.” Tsume’s perpetual itch moved from her elbow to her knee.

Ah, that explained the absence of the five large canines. It was unusual to see Kokoro in her wheelchair immediately upon returning from a mission, but she probably switched off of San when they returned for some impromptu medical treatment. “Well, Sakumo is correct – what the hostages choose to do with themselves after we’ve rescued them is their choice, although we should always strive to make sure that we don’t rescue them in such a way that they feel the desperate need to return to the safety of their kidnappers. They already have enough psychological issues from being kidnapped.” Hiruzen leveled all three girls as stern a look as he could muster. “And no, you may not keep the honey badger as a pet.” Kushina and Tsume’s faces fell in disappointment. Good heavens – where would they even _put_ the honey badger? It’s not like they could find a home in the Nara forest where a former war horse routinely terrorized anyone who didn’t belong in his territory, which so far consisted of everyone who wasn’t Tsume or Danzo (who wasn’t even normally allowed in the Nara forest). Even the Nara had to sneak through their forest with caution.

“Told you,” Kokoro whispered with a snide voice.

Sakumo merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled tiredly.

Hiruzen rubbed his forehead. He already had a headache from dealing with Jiraiya and his team earlier. “Dismissed,” he told the girls. “Sakumo, I need you to stay for information on a possible long-term mission.”

The kunoichi couldn’t hide their curiosity as Sakumo ushered them out of room. When the door was sealed and privacy was ensured, Sakumo faced Hiruzen once more. He rubbed the back of his head self-consciously. “Sorry, sir. Those three can make anything into a real circus, sometimes.”

Ah, the perfect lead-in. “Speaking of circuses, Sakumo, might I interest you in an undercover mission that would require you four joining said circus? It has the potential for your kunoichi to advance in rank. Although before we get into that conversation, there's this request I've received from Kiri that I would like to get some background details on..."

oOoOoOo

Once they were safely outside and standing in the corner of the lot, close to the Academy playground but out of the way of foot traffic, Tsume gave in to basic instincts and chewed on her wrist. Kushina and Kokoro watched silently for a moment, and then exchanged looks.

“Now that we’ve seen the Hokage, why don’t you go to Aunt Natsumi?” Kokoro asked diplomatically.

Tsume sounded like she had a mouthful of food as she gnawed on the welt. “Nuh-uh. I promithed to thee Kakashi firtht.”

“You might concern him if he sees you like this,” Kushina said quickly. “If not him, then certainly Pakkun and the rest of the summons.”

Tsume released her wrist. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I guess I should head over to Aunt Natsumi. Gotta face the lecture some time or another.” She looked at Kokoro with a worried expression as she scratched the back of one leg with her other foot. “Are you going to be all right for a while without San?”

Kokoro waved her off, her expression placid and her scent calm and resentment-free. “I’m fine. The wheelchair will give me a chance to practice my chakra threads. Besides,” she gently rubbed her knees through the blanket, “the stirrups are starting to rubbing my skin raw, so I’ve got to let it heal before I break out into sores again.”

“Oh. Gotcha. Oh – hey! Does anyone want to crash at Sakumo-sensei’s for dinner? He did say that he’d make a roast if we got all the hostages without any casualty.”

Kushina smiled and dropped a hand on Tsume’s shoulder. “Tsume-chan, our _dignity_ died on that hillside. Between the hive of disturbed wasps and the even more disturbed honey badger, I think we can safely assume that the Hokage will never again let us have anything to do with hostage situations.” Tsume secretly hoped that Kushina was right; she didn’t do well thinking through hostage situations, which usually had to be handled delicately and diplomatically. She was more of a mow-through-the-enemy and sort-the-bodies-afterwards sort of girl. Or threaten to choke people with umbilical cords when forced to assist with unexpected labors.

“I think it’s best if you just head back to Aunt Natsumi,” Kokoro added. “She looked like she wanted to talk to you about something. Well, besides paying more attention to your ninken so they don’t get stung, either. And maybe she’ll take pity on your and try to heal the welts that you have.”

That all seemed reasonable enough to Tsume. The girls talked a little longer to figure out what plans for tomorrow would be, and it seemed – without a mission – Tsume wouldn’t be seeing either of her teammates. Kokoro was due for another round with her brothers in T&I, and Kushina had some lessons on fuuinjutsu. (“ _There’s a lot of reading and memorization involved. You’d be bored out of your mind, Tsume. I even get bored out of my mind, sometimes.”)_

Tsume could respect Kushina wanting to learn more of her destroyed home village, even if it seemed like it needed to be in secrecy, but she wished that Kushina didn’t have to smell of dishonesty whenever she tried to distract or sidetrack Tsume’s curiosity. Not when Kushina also smelled of Jiraiya and Minato. It was never okay if Tsume lied to her friends, so why should it be all right if they did the same to her?

Trying not to feel like a bereft piece of driftwood, Tsume parted from her friends and headed for the family compound. She paused several times, making sure that she was out of sight in an alley, to give her welts a satisfying scratch. Scratching didn’t make the welts any better, but it _felt_ satisfying. Aunt Natsumi’s scent had shifted away from the compound when Tsume arrived, even though her ninken were present in the canine stables.

Oyubi was there with Himewari, still dressing the welts on Kuromaru when Tsume entered the nursing room where all the medical supplies for the ninken were kept. Himewari looked upon the other ninken with amused tolerance. Tsume briefly hoped that Kuromaru wasn’t been treated last as a punishment to her. Grandmother’s ninken sulked off to the side – they looked like they had been thoroughly scolded by Oyubi to prevent them from licking off the medicated paste or rolling around in the first dung heap they could find.

“There you are.” Oyubi’s smile was as welcoming as her scent as she tilted her head to the side and regarded Tsume. “Come here.” She turned from Kuromaru, who greeted Tsume with a whine and a thump of his tail. “He’s stung the least. Seems to me like you got the brunt of the wasps.”

That made the welt on Tsume’s elbow demand attention. She squirmed as she tried not to scratch it in front of Oyubi. “The wasps followed me; the ninken followed the wasps. I managed to find a pond of water to dive into, but I wasn’t very good at holding my breath, but the ninken kinda distracted the wasps. It’s, uh, complicated.” After a moment, she said, "Oyubi, wasps are mean, _evil_ bugs, and they're even worse than Aunt Natsumi's geese summon!"

Oyubi’s eyes lit with amusement as she smiled and ruffled Tsume’s hair. “The ninken told me what happened.” Yeah, Grandmother’s ninken were the _worst_ gossipmongers that Tsume had ever met. “I thought it was actually quite clever given your experience with strategy. It lured out the kidnappers without requiring your team to endanger yourself. I am sad that you had to learn the hard way just how evil an entire nest of wasps can be.” She shrugged. “I know that Shikake just started working strategy with you recently in preparation for submitting a request for chuunin rank, so I recommend that you review this with him when you get the chance.”

Tsume pouted. “He’s making me play _go_. He said it would be easier for me to learn the rules and regulations because there’s only two colors to keep track of, instead of all the different pieces of shogi and the way they all move differently.” Aunt Natsumi had also tried to talk Shikake into also teaching Tsume how to play blackjack and poker — ( _“The First and Second Hokages taught me just fine. If it’s good enough for our esteemed leaders, then it’s good enough for my niece.”_

 _“There are many characteristics that I wouldn’t mind my daughter sharing with Senju Tsunade, but gambling isn’t one of them.”) –_ but didn’t have much success in changing Shikake’s mind.

“Something that will improve with age and practice, of that I have no doubt. Here, I want to apply this paste to your welts. Come here.” Oyubi sat on an overturned bucket, and patted the boarded floor between her booted feet. “Shuck your clothes and then stand over here.”

Tsume obeyed without hesitation, but she kept her underwear on because she hadn’t been stung _everywhere_. The medicated paste that Oyubi smeared on the welts was a slimy clay that stank of calendula and lavender. Tsume wrinkled her nose at the cold texture and the nearly-overwhelming stench, but it took away the immediate need to repeatedly scratch herself, and even eased the throbbing pain. She temporarily distracted herself by glumly staring down at her very modest chest as Oyubi worked on her back, and imagining what sort of pastes or herbs could help her cleavage improve. So far, religiously massaging her chest every night to increase blood flow and cup size hadn’t done anything. Cousin Megumi totally lied to her!

Distracting thoughts were for the birds. “Where’d Aunt Natsumi go?”

“She’s meeting with Shikake to discuss the next steps in your training.”

Tsume didn’t know if she should be excited or wary. Whenever Aunt Natsumi consulted Tsume’s sire, it involved memorization of some sort – that’s how playing _go_ got started in the first place. Shikake’s exercises and games were boring and hard to sit still for. Tsume was a doer, not a thinker, and such was foreign to the ways of Nara everywhere. The beginning of her training had mostly consisted on how the clan was run and why it ran the way it did; Tsume was familiar with the workings, so only a little time had been spent on it. _Then_ came the nightmare – how _other_ clans worked, and the necessity of knowing all the details because she was a clan head. Even though the Inuzuka clan wasn’t exactly the most well-known of clans, it was almost guaranteed that they were related in some way or another to nearly everyone in the Village.

If Tsume didn’t consider the Inuzuka clan hers, she would’ve abdicated her position as soon as she learned what the word even meant.

At least the lessons with Aunt Natsumi’s ax were fun, informative, and a great stress relief – there had been some unfortunate timber incidents, but Aunt Natsumi assured Tsume that the trees would eventually grow back. If only Tsume could say the same for the lessons in building her chakra stamina. Tsume kept telling herself that eventually having her very own summon would make all the work worth her ongoing effort.

Oyubi patted Tsume’s shoulder. “You’ll need to keep your clothes off, otherwise you’ll rub the paste right off.”

“Right. But I should still do something productive with my time.” Because a clan head was supposed to be productive and involved with her clan when she had the free time. Tsume thought really hard for a moment, sniffed the air, and then smiled. “I should go see how some of the clan girls are doing with their new partners.” Tsume didn’t care much for spending a lot of time with most of the older clan adults; the memory of Inuzuka Shinzou and her ruling the clan with an iron fist was held as a standard against Tsume’s lax leadership (something Aunt Natsumi blamed on “ _that damn Nara breeding – I knew it would come back and bite us in the ass somehow._ ”) and brain injury. But the younger women and children were more accepting.

“You have fun with that,” Oyubi said absent-mindedly as she gathered up the supplies.

As Tsume was leaving the stables, she brushed past Oyubi’s mother, who was coming in with a fresh bucket of water to replenish the canine drinking bowls. Tsume froze when she caught the slightest change in scent, brain whirling for a moment. Then she turned and spoke: “Shinchuu-chan, you’re pregnant!”

Shinchuu dropped the water in surprise, and Oyubi choked, supplies falling everywhere as her arms flailed.

After a moment, Oyubi finally found her voice, and loudly at that. “WHAT? HOW?”

oOoOoOo

Shinchuu was a true simpleton. She was the only daughter of Inuzuka Bashira, who had been twenty-one years old when the Clan joined Konoha. Bashira had what Grandmother had called “female problems” which made it difficult for her to get pregnant. The only time she ever successfully managed was when she was thirty-three years old. It had been a rough pregnancy, and Bashira was forced on bed rest when she was only four months along. She was determined to keep her child, insisting that it was daughter before Shinchuu was even born. Being Grandmother’s favorite niece was probably the only reason why Grandmother didn’t drown Bashira’s daughter when they realized what she was. (Orochimaru would later say that Shinchuu was very lucky – most people with “extra chromosomes” were born with defective hearts and didn’t live long, but Shinchuu’s heart was strong and healthy. To which Bashira had declared, “ _But of course it is! That’s why I named her for such!_ ”)

Shinchuu was assigned to work in the kennels as soon as she was able, constantly shadowed by Bashira, who retired herself from fieldwork just to make sure that her daughter didn’t meet any untimely accidents. Shinchuu’s intellectual capabilities were even worse than Tsume’s – although that never stopped Grandmother from declaring, many times, that Tsume was even more of an idiot than Shinchuu – but she was no less ambitious than any other Inuzuka woman. Shinchuu made it a lifelong mission to win the hearts of her fellow clanswomen and the ninken, and she was very successful.

Shinchuu was congenial and hardworking, incapable of lying or hurting anyone. She cried when she found a baby bird fallen from its nest; she cooed over clan children’s booboos. She even learned how to bake from the Akimichi so she could bring fresh cookies to everyone who got sick or injured, even though she was never able to learn how to read. She was shorter than the average Inuzuka, plump with a face that rarely stopped smiling, hazel eyes, and hair like burnished copper in bright sunlight. She spoke slowly, but listened well. She had always been kind to Tsume, and had made sure that Tsume didn’t lack cookies after being found in the Nara Forest.

When she was young, Shinchuu had a sweetheart in Uchiha Hiroaki, who also had an extra chromosome and was a year younger than her. Hiroaki had been unusually overindulged by the Uchiha clan – they reveled in the opportunity and luxury of having a child who would’ve otherwise been a burden and a liability to the clan in the Warring Era. Hiroaki was allowed to romance Shinchuu when Shinzou was away from the Village on missions. It had been darling, Bashira had said, like two small children going on make-believe dates. It always seemed to Tsume that Bashira had an unusually tolerant fondness for the Uchiha clan. Much more than Grandmother, at any rate.

The fact that Shinchuu’s familial scent was a mix of Uchiha and Inuzuka probably explained a lot, but Tsume never said a word of it. Sometimes, Tsume wasn’t sure that Grandmoither had hated Shinchuu because of the extras chromosome, or because there was a child with Uchiha blood in the Inuzuka clan.

Despite having minds and spirits of children, Shinchuu and Hiroaki had the normal, randy hormones of teenagers, and so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that Shinchuu got pregnant. To be fair to Hiroaki and Shinchuu, no one had ever considered the possibility that two child-like people would have very adult cravings and thus would need protection. Nor did it occur to the adults that people with extra chromosomes were, in fact, capable of breeding. _(“Rare, but not impossible,”_ Orochimaru had explained. After a Second War, he took a great interest in chromosomes and DNA, and Tsume, at fourteen years of age, had taken a page out of her sire’s book and napped through most of Orochimaru’s scientific research and presentation last year. Oyubi roughly nudged her awake every time something pertained to Shinchuu.)

The moment she learned of the pregnancy, Shinzou publicly confronted the Uchiha Clan Head with all the paternity paperwork ready to be signed by someone who, legally, could be held accountable if the offspring was a boy. The Uchiha clan head and Fugaku’s father, Chimon, refused from the get-go to acknowledge the possibility that Hiroaki could be the sire, even though both clans knew that Hiroaki and Shinchuu adored each other, and were often seen holding hands when they went for picnics at the banks of the Naka River.

Chimon accused Shinzou of stealing sperm from someone _who wasn’t Uchiha_ and deliberately fertilizing Shinchuu to force the Uchiha clan into adopting an outsider. Hiroaki was too simple, Chimon had insisted, and too childlike to have sex with anyone, no matter how much the Inuzuka whores liked to prostitute themselves out. Although, he had added with a biting venom, he was hardly surprised that _Shinzou_ would be ruthless enough to _breed_ a simpleton like Shinchuu. 

Shinzou had declared, equally loud to the world, that the only reason she wasn‘t accusing Hiroaki of rape was because her nose told her that the whole fiasco was of mutual poor decision making and Chimon’s inability to keep track of a single Uchiha simpleton, and even simpletons knew how to rub their cock until it spilled seed.

The argument-turned-brawl demolished the area that would later become Training Grounds 49, and had required the Third Hokage, Aunt Natsumi, Aunt Bashira, and three shadow-using Nara, to intervene and successfully separate the two. (The Third Hokage decreed that any discussion required between the Uchiha and Inuzuka clan heads had to go through an intermediary, and he assigned Homura, who complained even more than the two people she was forced to play messenger for. He reluctantly removed her from intermediary after two years, when Chimon and Shinzou finally agreed to behave well enough not to need any more adult supervision.)

Needless to say, the end result of an Inuzuka and an Uchiha getting along _famously_ well fueled Grandmother’s general animosity towards the Uchiha clan, and caused an even more uncomfortable rift between the two clans. The final driving force between the clan heads would be Uchiha Madara crossing paths with Inuzuka Tsume in the Nara Forest, fifteen years later. Even past Uchiha clan heads and future Inuzuka clan heads didn’t get along, it would seem. Such was the way of the world.

Grandmother would’ve forced an abortion on Shinchuu if the rest of the Inuzuka clan _and every single ninken_ hadn’t closed ranks around Shinchuu to protect her from Grandmother’s wrath. Shinchuu was just a month shy of her sixteenth year when she gave birth to Oyubi. Aunt Natsumi and Aunt Bashira traded shifts, never leaving Oyubi alone, attaching themselves to the infant in such a way that Grandmother never had the opportunity to squirrel another innocent baby into the woods. It helped that the rest of the clan was horrified with the idea that Grandmother would abandon a baby _girl_ in the woods.

No one stopped Grandmother from cauterizing Shinchuu’s fallopian tubes during the C-section, though.

As far as Tsume had been aware, Grandmother had never allowed Shinchuu to leave the clan compound after the birth, without a personal chaperone who was sworn to keep Shinchuu away from Hiroaki. After Shinchuu learned that Grandmother died, she went directly to her mother and demanded to resume seeing Hiroaki, even though they hadn’t talked in over twenty years. Aunt Bashira had laughed, ruffled Shinchuu’s hair and said, “Ah hell, why not. Life is too short to get in the way of true love. Have at it, kids.”

oOoOoOo

It should’ve been impossible for Shinchuu to become pregnant at thirty-eight years old with cauterized fallopian tubes. But Tsume knew exactly what her nose was telling her, and Oyubi, after increasing her own sensitivity to detect the change of hormones, had reluctantly agreed with Tsume’s findings.

Tsume, covered in itchy welts and stinky plaster, naked except for her underwear, didn’t expect to find herself seated with Oyubi, Shinchuu, and Aunt Bashira in Bashira’s home, which was home to four other adult Inuzuka women and their children, nursing a hot mug of tea and wondering if she couldn’t get away with a stiff drink. Sure, Tsume was only fourteen years old, technically underage, but her birthday was three months away, and she was clan head. She deserved a stiff drink. “Can I have some booze?” she asked.

“Never touch the stuff,” Aunt Bashira replied with a prim voice. “And neither does the others here.”

Well, that wasn’t true. Hiji had a box of fine Iwa beer stashed in her closet, and it wasn’t like she’d notice if Tsume raided it – Hiji was currently doing a stint at the Capital as one of the Fire Daimyo’s Twenty Elite Guardians. (It was actually Twenty-One – but no one wanted to acknowledge Hose’s official capacity as a Konoha nin, even if he had four legs. The Fire Guardians were originally Twelve, but when the last War got too close to the Capital, the Fire Daimyo decided to increase the number to Eighteen. After the death of the old Fire Daimyo from poisoning a year after the war, the number was then increased to Twenty.)

Oyubi had her face buried in her folded arms. “I can’t believe this,” she muttered. Shinchuu hadn’t stopped crying; her face was blotchy with tears and snot. Aunt Bashira stroked her daughter’s hand with fond comfort. Oyubi raised her face. “Are you sure this isn’t cancer? Hachi’s cancer kicked off the same level of hormones.”

Tsume snorted and tapped a claw against the table’s surface. “Yeah, no. I already tracked her scent to implantation and sex with Hiroaki. Well, the sex happened first.” When Oyubi’s hopeful suspicion for cancer didn’t change, she added, “Two and a half weeks ago. A midnight tryst on Training Ground 10. Implantation was four days later, when Shinchuu-chan was making chocolate chip cookies.” Oyubi’s face fell back into her folded arms with a whine.

Bashira glared at her granddaughter. “You think that the _cancer_ that killed your cousin is somehow _better_ than your mother being _pregnant_?” This only made Shinchuu cry harder.

Oyubi rubbed her temples. “That’s not what I meant! It’s just…” Oyubi didn’t smell of embarrassment. She had spent her youth earning a reputation for being ruthless, crushing anyone in the Village who publicly mocked her mother. It was one of the reasons Danzo made her one of his direct subordinates in ANBU when she was fifteen years old, a young age that was unusual for any kunoichi to successfully enter ANBU. “I know what others are going to say. Especially at her age – mother has the chance of having a child like herself.” It had only been in the last year that Orochimaru’s genetic research on people like Shinchuu was causing a cultural shift in acceptance. A very reluctant, slow-as-continental-drift acceptance. And probably only in Konoha. But acceptance was emerging, now that most people realized that having children with an extra chromosome wasn’t because someone had cursed their family line.

Tsume didn’t really see what the big deal was. Sure, Shinchuu was a little old, but not abnormally so. And, sure, she had her fallopian tubes cauterized – that didn’t mean that they couldn’t heal over time, right? Tsume knew of several women in Madame Haori’s brothel whose birth control failed – that bucket and long hook hadn’t exactly been used just on Tsume. “Maybe,” Tsume said, “Grandmother wasn’t all that good with cauterizing the tubes. I mean, Shinchuu and her sweetheart never had the chance to get together until after Grandmother died, so it’s not like we would’ve known sooner, right?” Then she turned to Shinchuu. “Do you want to keep the baby?”

Shinchuu became silent with her crying, and stared wide-eyed, nose and eyes still dribbling and wet.

“I mean, you might have a miscarriage. It may be too soon yet to know if this is going to be a viable pregnancy. But if you are successful with this, do you want to keep the baby?”

Shinchuu scrubbed at her face and nose. “I can… The baby will be mine?” She spoke very slowly, slurring her words, always struggling to speak clearly. She had spoken like this all of Tsume’s life.

Tsume firmly nodded. “Yes.”

Shinchuu rubbed her hands, dropped her eyes, and then raised them to meet Tsume’s. Words still slow, still slurred, but voice as soft as a whisper, she asked, “Even if it’s a boy?” Aunt Bashira’s scent swelled of anger for a brief moment. Having been born before Konoha was even a thing, and entering the village as a young adult, Aunt Bashira was old-school enough to not be pleased with Tsume’s declaration at the end of the Second War that she was allowing Inuzuka women to claim their sons if they so desired.

Tsume tilted her chin upward and held Aunt Bashira’s gaze. After a moment, Aunt Bashira lowered her eyes, shoulders hunching forward in an act of resignation. This gamma, no matter that she was more than half a century Tsume’s senior, wasn’t going to challenge Tsume. Not openly, at least. Tsume turned and looked at Shinchuu. “Even if it’s a boy. I am queen alpha bitch, and no mother will ever be separated from the puppy she wants, so long as I live.”

oOoOoOo

It was late afternoon by the time Sakumo and the others had finished talking to Taiken Enkan and outlining the different places everyone may fit in. However, Enkan demanded – with a sweeping, melodramatic flourish that made Danzo’s twitching increase – to meet everyone before he could agree to their placements. Since Natsumi was just as demanding with being fed as Enkan was about meeting the team, they all voted to convene at the Inuzuka compound.

oOoOoOo

Tsume lived in the same house that she had grown up in with her sister and great-grandmother. It was a little on the ramshackle side, too square to fit in the rest of the Konoha architecture, and too bizarre to fit in with the traditional Fire Country structures that the Uchiha, Hyuuga, or Aburame clans had modeled their compounds after. The wood was clawed or chewed on in various places, and most of the furniture was high off the ground to keep clumsy pups off. Tsume hadn’t been motivated to change much – she had given away most of Grandmother’s personal affects, while carefully storing away Hidarime’s favorite belongings. Tsume told herself that one day she could be able to fit into most of Hidarime’s clothes, so there was no sense in giving anything away what would one day be perfectly serviceable to her. In truth, when stored all together in a tightly sealed trunk, Hidarime's scent would waft out when Tsume opened the trunk every other month or so, and Tsume dreaded the day when the last bit of her sister’s presence would fade away. Okay, so Kakashi was a mixture of Hidarime’s scent, but it wasn’t quite the same.

It was a relatively large house on the compound with multiple bedrooms, a large and open attic, and a well-stocked birthing room that many of the Inuzuka women still used, and Tsume assisted with whenever she wasn’t busy with a mission. Except for when an expectant mother and her entourage were present, the only people who stayed for any significant length of time with Tsume was her team or Kakashi. Tsume sometimes felt as empty as the house, even with her ninken always at her side, but the void was becoming like an old friend - not the best of friends, but she didn't want to think of it at an enemy. As time passed and the memory of her time at Madame Haori’s House of Pleasure faded, the void seemed to shrink smaller. But it was always there, just as steady and as reliable as the seal on her toe. Tsume also tried to never think of the siren seal as an enemy – it was more like a temperamental aunt.

Tsume had plans to someday fill up her house and void with puppies – two legged and four – but wasn’t in too much of a hurry, just yet.

Yamanaka Yuu had provided therapy to Tsume for six months after her return to Konoha; the Third Hokage and everyone else in the know probably thought it was about her experience in Madame Haori’s brothel and the rape in the ravine, but Yuu had reviewed the events with Tsume and felt it was more necessary to help her work through the history of abuse and survival with Grandmother, and with Tsume’s concept of the void that Orochimaru had warned her about. Tsume’s respect for Yuu was as equal to her respect for Sakumo.

It was thus a surprise to Tsume when twenty people, many of whom traveled outside her normal social circles, flooded her empty house, taking up seats when and where they could. She tried to smother the wave of irritation and anger that people would invade her space without letting her know ahead of time, so she could at least put on a shirt - okay, so she could smell them coming, but hadn’t expected them to converge at her house! Then she figured that people who invited themselves into her home and helped themselves to the extra-large pot of barbequed beef that she had made to share with the ninken didn’t deserve the dignity of Tsume covering up her underwear, barely-there boobs, and plaster-pasted welts.

She was already feeling emotionally wrung out with dealing with Oyubi – now holed up in her own place, clearly sulking with the idea of having a sibling young enough to be her own child, still wrestling with a lifetime of trying to make peace with the idea of _what_ her parents were – Aunt Bashira (quite clearly elated), and Shinchuu (who had left three hours ago and converged across town with Uchiha Hiroaki – by the smell of it, she had shared the news and both had settled into a happy, hopeful little buzz of endorphins). After that, Tsume decreased her olfaction as low as she could just to give them as much privacy as they were owed.

The ninken were left to sulk in their corner, resentfully glowering at their dishes of dry kibble as Jiraiya and Aunt Natsumi helped distribute bowls of barbequed beef and rice. Tsume got several garbled messages from various people about the purpose of their gathering – chuunin and jounin testing, long-term mission, great degree of involvement from multiple parties – before Sakumo finally had her sit between Uchiha Mikoto and Minato, and hold Kakashi in her lap. Mikoto, with great grace, managed to ignore Tsume’s nudity, while Minato struggled to keep his embarrassment hidden. Kakashi just pinched his nostrils shut and gave Tsume the stink-eye.

“Yeah, well, just don’t ever try to lead away an angry swarm of wasps after you throw them over the fence into the bandits’ secret hideout,” Tsume warned Kakashi. She always tried to make sure that Kakashi learned from her mistakes, even if Kakashi was probably too smart to make such mistakes in the first place.

Taiken Enkan followed Danzo as the last person to arrive in Tsume’s house, and was as brightly colored as he was flamboyant – he wore a water-colored silk scarf in shades of orange and green wrapped around his throat, a green vest embroidered with fire-wrapped phoenixes, billowing white platoons, and elaborately sequined sandals. His waxed mustache was as black as his hair and curled elaborately; he had a tendency to twirl the ends of his mustache around his long fingers. He carried the odors of distant lands and exotic animals in his skin and clothing, the hint of powerful, rippling chakra with every fluid movement. Tsume wanted to bury her face in his vest and just spend the rest of the evening trying to figure out all the many different places the man had been. She had never crossed paths with someone who smelled as well-traveled in such a short amount of time, and that included shinobi from any different Villages.

“Where is your shirt?” Danzo demanded, pulling to a halt once he noticed Tsume.

“I was told not to put anything on while I’m wearing the paste, and I can’t rinse it off until tomorrow,” Tsume shot back. “Besides, it’s _my_ house, and I can wear what I want.”

Aunt Natsumi shrugged. “It’s just traditional Inuzuka garb,” she told Danzo, which made him twitch in irritation.

As soon as Enkan was introduced to Kushina, he immediately began to praise her bright red hair. “The magnificent color! A white hair band – no! I shall insist upon _white pearls_ woven into these gorgeous crimson strands!” Enkan flexed his fingers as he loudly planned Kushina’s costume of rhinestone-studded black tights. Kushina sunk further into her spot with every elaborate description, her face and ears growing redder and redder with anger and embarrassment.

Enkan’s tone didn’t shift when he turned to Mikoto and began to heap florid praise upon her impeccable black hair and flawless alabaster skin, the tips of his fingers sweeping across her cheeks and forehead. “You would be _magnificent_ in rich emerald silk, with a headdress of peacock feathers framing your face!” Mikoto managed to look serene and unbothered by the attention, but she did not smell pleased with the physical intrusion.

When Enkan turned from Mikoto to Tsume, his voice stuttered to a halt. Tsume tried not to squirm as he studied her with flat, dark eyes, taking in her state of undress, the plaster, and the clan markings. Then he carefully reached over, gingerly pinched a lock of her wild hair as if he expected fleas to be present, and said, “Well, I can always use more help cleaning out the tiger cages.”

Tsume bitterly wondered how much trouble she’d be in for biting off the man’s fingers. She still wanted to leisurely sniff the man’s clothes, but she also suddenly wanted to mug him in a back alley and steal him naked at the first opportunity. Then she wrapped her arms around Kakashi and angled her body away when Enkan’s eyes fell downward and lit up like a newly-minted genin in a weapons store. “Kakashi isn’t going anywhere near any tigers!” she declared firmly, making sure that her fangs flashed as she spoke.

Sakumo’s voice was edged with steel. “Tsume is absolutely correct _. My son_ will not be allowed near carnivores.”

They both ignored Kakashi’s declaration of how much he loved tigers.

Kakashi also adored Juubi.

Kakashi’s perception of predators was sometimes as poor as Tsume’s, and everyone who knew Tsume and Kakashi was fully aware of this flaw.

“Yes – but think of the potential in the father-son act that I told you of. I’m sure that your throw is quite accurate enough to miss your son completely even if he is strapped to a spinning wheel.” Enkan then turned towards Minato. He boldly reached down and squeezed Minato’s bicep. Tsume saw a flash of irritation cross Minato’s face before he successfully schooled his expression into something that was neutral. “ _Excellent_ muscle tone,” Enkan declared. “I can see you as a tightrope walker, a daredevil capable of the most death-defying, awe-inspiring stunts.” He whipped away from Minato, one hand extending over his head as his fingers bent rigidly. “Behold!” he called, his voice booming through the room, “The Golden Streak of Enkan’s World Circus!”

Enkan was as equally dismissive of Hotaru as he had been with Tsume, turning away from the Aburame chuunin with a sniff and a quiet comment of, “Good headliner for another freak show, I suppose. The last one I had quit before we even got started.”

Hotaru paused in her eating to stare at her bowl of barbequed beef and rice. Two kikaichu crawled over her exposed wrist. Tsume reached around Minato and lightly placed her hand on Hotaru’s knee as Enkan began to praise Osamu’s muscle tone. Minato draped an arm around Hotaru’s shoulder, and Hotaru gave both of them a half-hearted smile.

Everyone else received glowing descriptions as Enkan loudly fantasized of what amazing acts he could transform them into – Jiraiya preened after being subscribed as the World’s Strongest Man, and Aunt Natsumi appeared to be giving serious thought to becoming a soothsaying witch, whatever _that_ meant. The more he praised others, the more Tsume wanted to pry up the floorboards and pull them over her head until everyone was gone. She was sure that Hotaru would join her in misery. While Enkan lavished praise upon Inoichi’s long blond locks, Tsume self-consciously touched her hair and wondered how she would look with blond or red hair that was long and sleek.

Thankfully, watching Danzo square off against Enkan was one of the most entertaining things that Tsume witnessed in a long time.

“Ringmaster extraordinaire –”

“Hell no.”

“Such dark passion in your face, such dangerous body language—”

“I could kill you…”

“You would be _stunning_ in crimson and black—”

“… but there are too many witnesses.”

Tsume squirmed in her seat, and then tugged Minato close, because she felt more comfortable whispering in his ear than in Mikoto’s. “ _Can_ we hope that Danzo will kill him?” Danzo’s scent had been curling tighter and tighter, like he was crouching down as a cat stalked its prey. His face had an irritated expression, and he was giving Enkan that flat lizard-eye look, like he was trying to decide if he should snap the man’s neck or garrote him instead. There was something tense about his body, for all that he appeared to be seated and relaxing between Aunt Natsumi and Sakumo, nursing a cup of milked-down tea.

Minato shrugged and smiled, but whispered back. “Probably not. I understand that Enkan-san is important for the mission.”

“—and such a _glorious_ voice you have, sir, such _texture_ and such _tone_ … Er.” Enkan must’ve suddenly realized what Danzo’s body language meant as a wave of fear seeped from his pores. Danzo’s lips twisted into a sadistic smile as he sipped his tea. “Um. Perhaps we’ll revisit this another time?”

Danzo stared wordlessly at Enkan until the man shrank back. “May that time never come to pass. Why don’t we instead explain why you’re even here.” Danzo gestured to the others, sitting or kneeling in various positions in Tsume’s living room. Jiraiya’s team was present; Kokoro was the only person on Tsume’s team who was missing (and, per Tsume’s nose, all the way across town having dinner with her older brothers); Tsume’s brother and his teammates were also present, as well as Mikoto, Fugaku’s younger brothers, and a chuunin team that Yamanaka Yuu had inherited during the Second Shinobi War that Tsume knew little about.

“Ah, yes. I haven’t yet had the chance to introduce myself yet.” Enkan smoothed his vest down, twirled the ends of his mustache around his fingers, and then threw his arms wide. “I am Taiken Enkan, manager and owner of the world-famous Eternity Circus! I have the most extraordinary exotic animals and displays! Beneath my silken top, gathered together in one place, are the world’s greatest performers and most spectacular wonders of all corners of this world! People from all over flock to see death-defying feats, to marvel at daredevil stunts, and be stunned by graceful beauty. And tonight, here and now, you all have the chance to become a part of that.”

There was an itch at the base of Tsume’s spine that Oyubi’s paste didn’t seem to be working on. She squirmed, trying hard not to give in to the temptation to reach behind and scratch.

Uchiha Daimaru raised his hand. “We’re shinobi, not performers. What does this have to do with us?”

Enkan fluttered his hands in protest. “No, no, that is where you are wrong, my fire-breathing act!”

Daimaru twitched in irritation.

“Shinobi are the _greatest_ of all performers, are you not? Can a civilian climb walls? Transform themselves into other people or creatures? Cast illusions that capture and lures the unsuspecting? Summon mystical creatures of ancient wisdom and lore? I think not. Indeed…” Enkan’s smile took on an oily edge as he folded his hands and curled his shoulder forward. The shadows seemed to loom around him as his eyes glittered in the dim light, and Tsume heard Minato suck his breath in sharply. “Shinobi constantly put on stage performances when they do undercover work, as if their very life depends on it.”

Tsume leaned forward so she could study Shikaku’s face just as his scent lurched. Shikaku was folded over, legs half-bent with his arms resting on his knees and his head settled in his hands. His eyes were only half-open, but a wary tension tightened his spine.

Enkan slowly crossed the room with smooth, gliding steps. There was a hungry, dangerous look on his face that made Tsume carefully shift Kakashi behind her. Enkan’s gaze flickered from face to face. “You have all been chosen for the Hokage for a long-term mission. You may not know the end game or goal at this point and time – just as there will be other missions in the future that you are given without any reason for their purpose – and it is your solemn duty as shinobi, sworn and true to Konohagakure, to throw your heart and soul into the success of the mission.” He stopped before Tsume, looking down at her with a face as still as stone and his body languid. Tsume wanted to sink her claws into his knees and head-butt his testicles so Kakashi had time to flee.

He turned away from her abruptly. “Starting tomorrow, you will attend to my circus, which is stationed on the other side of Konoha’s east wall. You will learn about circus performers, you will _become_ circus performers. You will live, eat, and breathe everything about the circus, for your mission dictates such. In your heart of hearts, you will remain shinobi – but the greatest shinobi is the best at anything that their mission requires them to do. If you must go undercover as a cook, you will be the greatest cook to ever cook, so that no one will ever suspect you to be anything but a cook. If you are to be aerial silk dancer, then you will be the greatest aerial silk dancer to spiral through the air, because no one must ever know that you are much more than an aerial silk dancer.” He waved his hand as he continued to walk to Tsume’s door. “I shall expect to see everyone by 8 AM tomorrow. For now, I must think of where people should be assigned for this coming year’s performances.”

Enkan’s departure seemed to suck all the energy from the room. Kushina and Tsume were the only genin present; the chuunin exchanged looks, unsure of what to say or do after such expressive drama and announcements. Most of the adults seemed resigned – Aunt Natsumi appeared bored, and Danzo just looked irritated – and Tsume’s ninken were eying people’s leftovers.

Tsume nudged Minato and pointed at his half-eaten bowl of food. “Are you going to finish that?”

Minato shook himself, the whimsical thinking expression on his face disappearing. He looked at the bowl of food, looked at Tsume, looked at Kushina, and then cautiously pushed the bowl of food towards Tsume. “You can have it.”

Tsume glanced over at Kushina. Kushina stared hungrily at the food, her own bowl licked clean without a grain of rice or trace of barbeque sauce to be seen. Feeling bad for her ninken, Tsume gave Kushina the food, and Kushina immediately began wolfing it down with a mumbled, _Thanks!_

Danzo stood after finishing his tea. “Here’s the thing,” he announced. His voice carried, like Enkan’s, but with the low, dark energy of a rolling thunderstorm, and not the tossing, frantic energy of a churning sea. “You and your teams have been selected to join Enkan’s traveling circus as a group test for rank advancement. Chuunin will have the chance to prove that they have the skills, abilities, and experience to become jounin, and likewise that the genin may prove that they have what it takes to become chuunin. This mission will last approximately four months, and will take us traveling through multiple nations. It's about field promotions, such the opportunities are becoming more uncommon without a war where our ninjas can prove their skills.

“We have planned several independent solo missions during the traveling circus to evaluate your individual strengths. However, your actions and attitude during this mission, especially with the circus, will count either towards a recommendation, or against such. You will not be wearing your forehead protectors for this mission, but you still represent Konoha and all her values. Here, your sensei will be your judge as much as your teacher, but Orochimaru and I shall have the ultimate say in your advancement.” Then Danzo flashed his teeth in what he probably thought was a smile, and seemed to get visceral satisfaction from the way most people flinched. “I have high standards, and Orochimaru doesn’t like doing anyone any favors.” Then he departed, leaving through the same door that Enkan had used.

Tsume wondered just how many people were going to associate her house with weirdoes who had nothing to do with her clan. Shikake had lectured her at length regarding negative associations, and she just knew that having Enkan and Danzo in her house like this was going to somehow be her responsibility.

Uchiha Ringo raised his hand like he was back at the Academy. “Do we need to have our bags packed and ready to go when we arrive at the circus tomorrow?”

Sakumo sighed. “No. Everyone will receive a week’s worth of training with the circus – it’s not just the acts that you have to learn. _Everyone_ will be involved the setup and running of day-to-day operations – transport, setup and tear-down, behind-the-scenes functions, equipment, etcetera – so it’s all something you’re going to have to learn. Even star attractions will need to learn how to clean the tigers’ cages,” he added wryly.

Aunt Natsumi grinned. “Or how to walk behind the elephant with the shit-bucket. That’s one of my favorites.”

“ _What_ is Enkan?” Shikaku asked.

Sakumo, Aunt Natsumi, and Yuu all exchanged looks as Tsume suddenly realized that this whole circus mission thingamabob was a chuunin test for her and Kushina – _but what about Kokoro-chan?_

“Enkan is…” Yuu hesitated. “It’s difficult to put a singular description on the man, as you can see. He’s genuine in everything that he does, but everything that he does is also over the top.”

Aunt Natsumi made a rude noise. “He’s much more than that. Enkan happens to be head of a nomadic ninja clan that is loosely affiliated with Konoha. In this modern day and age, we like to think that the Hidden Villages are the end-all be-all of shinobi life, but there's still a few independent clans in every country that cling to the old ways, refusing to be assimilated at the loss of their culture and identity.”

Sakumo cleared his throat. “Well, in essence, yes. However, Enkan’s clan maintains a strong friendship with Konoha, and is loyal to the Country of Fire, so it’s not like we’re being invited by the enemy to infiltrate their stronghold. The traveling circuses are famous throughout the elemental nations for their shows and performers. They’re less known for the fact that some of circus performers also happen to be shinobi. Not _all_ of Enkan’s clan is present – most of them, in fact, didn’t come. This allowed Enkan’s main circus to have several openings, which allows _us_ to do a large group test for those we feel are most qualified for advancement.”

Yuu began to help gather up empty bowls. “There was a lot of rapid advancement during the war, but it stagnated in the following peace. Enkan’s circus was attacked several times during the war by bandits, which is why there are also more openings than normal. Enkan wants to get the show back on the road – restored to its formal glory, he said,” Yuu rolled his eyes, “for the peak traveling season. But for all his loyalty to Fire and allied friendship with Konoha, the man and his clan _aren’t_ one of us. Don’t let the situation lull you into a sense of false security.”

Tsume thought about the wagon train two years ago, with the samurai from Iron Country and all the wounded from other countries. She never felt unsafe within the train… of course, she had also been surrounded by her teammates and ninken and one cranky demi-summon, and it’s hard to feel unsafe when you’re surrounded by four-legged killing machines that liked you. She raised her hand in the air as another thought occurred to her.

“What is it?” Aunt Natsumi asked.

“Can I bring Juubi?”

Her brother’s team immediately raised a protest. Jeez, they got stampeded/chased/bitten _one_ lousy time – it wasn’t like Juubi had permanently maimed them or was stalking them through the streets of Konoha for a second attempt at vengeance.

Aunt Natsumi grinned and nudged Sakumo with her elbow. “Hey, can you imagine the look on Danzo’s face if we told him that he had to ride Juubi as part of his performance as the Ringmaster?”

Sakumo recoiled from Aunt Natsumi in horrified amusement. “ _You_ tell him that. You’re more like to survive such a conversation than _I_ would.”

Yuu shook his head, and his face was serious as he crossed his arms in front of himself. “Juubi is a warhorse, Tsume, not a performer. It wouldn’t be fair to place him in a circus setting and force him to behave, especially when many of the visitors to circuses tend to be young children with little sense of boundaries when it comes to very large, dangerous animals.” He pointedly looked at Kakashi.

“Oh.” She ignored the palpable relief from Shikaku, Inoichi, and Chouza. “Okay. Fair enough.” She didn’t want Juubi to be miserable, after all. 

The adults fielded several more questions from the genin and chuunin, including Tsume’s question of Kokoro.

Sakumo looked as upset as he smelled. “The Hokage decided to have Kokoro tested in another manner. Because of her physical limitations, she wouldn’t be able to fulfill all the requirements that the circus will demand, so Kokoro will stay here in Konoha.”

Tsume thought that was just horrible – Kokoro, Kushina, and she were a _team_. They were supposed to do missions together!

Sakumo smiled sadly at her, easily sensing her outrage. “We do like to keep genin teams together, but that’s not always going to be appropriate in the future as you advance in rank and skill. You’re an Inuzuka. If your tracking skills are needed for a mission that seems otherwise suited for a different team, you’ll be attached to that team without Kushina or Kokoro. It’s something you’re going to have to get used to.”

When the Third Hokage needed Tsume’s tracking skills, he usually just propped her on the top of the Second Hokage’s carved head and had her sniff the air with Oyubi at her elbow to interpret Tsume’s descriptions and assist her with calculating distances. Tsume figured that eventually the Hokage would send her on an official tracking mission, but it never occurred to her that she would be attached to a different team.

Tsume was trying not to pout and sulk as Aunt Natsumi declared it a night and shoved people out the front door. Sakumo stayed just a little longer to discuss Kakashi’s cares. “He won’t be coming with us on the circus – he’s too young, and it’s not really the place for him.” Kakashi and Sakumo faced Tsume, so Tsume was the only one who saw Kakashi stiffen and flash his father a look of betrayal. She said nothing though, because Sakumo had directed her a long time ago not to undermine or question his authority in front of Kakashi. As much as Tsume felt like she was Kakashi’s mother and was (unofficially) Kakashi’s clan leader, her head knew that she was just his teenaged aunt, and therefore she couldn’t butt in on Sakumo’s authority and territory.

Biting down her impulse to bring Kakashi along, Tsume instead smiled and ruffled Kakashi’s hair. “You’d probably get stuck with me cleaning the tiger’s cage anyway.”

Kakashi stuck his bottom lip out. “I’m not scared of tigers. I’ve got Pakkun. That tiger wouldn’t look at me twice.”

Sakumo tugged Kakashi to the front door. “Pakkun is just the right size for a tiger to snack on, and he’d probably be very put out with the fact that you seem perfectly fine using him as a delicious decoy.” Kakashi was still pouting as he held Sakumo’s hand and Tsume waved goodbye as they walked down her path.

Aunt Natsumi was the last person to leave. As she pulled on various layers of multicolored scarves and shawls (complaining, as she usually did, about the spring’s evening chill), she studied Tsume intensely. Then she tapped Tsume on her breastbone, because Tsume _finally_ got the growth spurt that brought the top of her wild hair to Aunt Natsumi’s clavicles, and said, “Show me the summon seals.”

Tsume obeyed without thinking about the order or applying chakra. She was at the point where muscle memory was firmly established, and she didn’t have to think twice (or four or five times) about how the order went.

“Good, good. You’re getting smoother at this, and faster. You just need to build up your level of chakra a wee bit more before you’re ready though, and then you will be able to summon your guardian. If you don’t have enough chakra to make it to the summon’s plane of existence, you’ll pass out, and you'll never have a second chance to make this attempt." A failure in a successful blank summon was considered a permanent rejection; Tsume would never be able to successfully sign any contract.

Tsume rubbed her hands together and nodded her head eagerly. “Oh boy!” She still dreamed of something ferocious and exciting. Sometimes she fretted in the dark of the night, when it was just her and the five ninken snoring in her bed, that she would be stuck with a guardian that was pathetic and embarrassing, like Cousin Hiji’s guppies or – worse yet – Cousin Touka’s naked mole rats. Tsume was hoping for something majestic, something that would make everyone look twice at her in awe and fear. (But mostly awe. Although a little fear wouldn’t be remiss, especially if it came from Shikaku or Fugaku.) She thought of how awesome it would be to have a wolf – even if it meant sharing the contract with Grandmother – but after what she saw today, she was now strongly hoping for a honey badger summon.

Aunt Natsumi laughed and flicked the tip of her finger against Tsume’s nose. It stung, because she used her claw. “Keep dreaming, child. The anticipation and excitement that comes with your very first summon is unmatched by anything else in life.” Her eyed were heavy-lidded and her gaze distant for just a moment. “And your guardian is very telling – it’s a reflection of your personality, of what you are.”

Tsume thought of what Grandmother had called her, and then thought about being Kakashi’s surrogate mother, and wondered what exactly would be an accurate reflection of what she was. Gosh, she could live with a hedgehog summon if she had to, even if it wasn’t very scary and looked kinda funny, too. Hedgehogs were still _way_ better than naked mole rats.

“Goodnight, sweetie. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow at the circus.”

Tsume nodded, closed the door behind Aunt Natsumi, and then turned to Kuromaru. “Remind me tomorrow before I leave for the circus to nab her, since she’ll probably get lost.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enkan's circus is a blend of Eastern and Western cultures, with a strong lean toward Western culture. I write what I know, but it's hard to look at the performers of the Eastern cultures (particularly Chinese) when you realize how brutal the trainers are to the children to force them into such flexibility. 
> 
> Than again, I"m writing about a culture that likes to take small five year old children and turn them into killing machines...


	39. Beta Years - Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, in my defense, my kitchen has been under construction for the last six weeks, and my computer got buried beneath all the stuff, and I couldn't reach it. Also, I was unable to nest with all my kitchen appliances and furniture shoved into the living room, so my anxiety was high, so I just buried my nose in my crochet and tried to ignore it all. And then I started watching Tangled the Animated Series with my daughter, and now I am emotionally invested in everyone's lives. I took advantage of my husband going hunting last weekend to put stuff away (although he wasn't yet done) and nested to my heart's content. Also, I unburied my computer.
> 
> So, there are some additional changes to this chapter from when it was originally posted several years ago - mainly, the interaction between Kagami and Tsume. There is a sound reason for getting Shinchuu pregnant, and we'll see it next chapter when Kagsmi tells Tsume what Hiroaki wants to name the baby...

The circus consisted of one gigantic, scarlet silk tent surrounded by a dozen or so smaller tents of varying sizes and colors. Various people wearing brightly colored and mismatched clothes dashed around the makeshift grounds, intent on fulfilling their own duties. Aunt Natsumi looked more like she belonged at the circus then Konoha, since her current wardrobe was a mixture of various plaids and stripes.

She sighed as Tsume and her ninken came to a halt so Tsume could orient herself to the new surroundings. “I wish I could tell you how much this reminds me of when I was just a girl, and our clan roamed the prairies and the woods, beholden to no man. Then again, it was a different world back then, much more brutal and hostile.” She tilted her head in thought. “And very little by way of plumbing, come to think of it.”

Tsume appreciated indoor plumbing as much as the next girl. Given how Aunt Natsumi sometimes reminisced on the old days, Tsume figured she was better off living in modern times with modern conveniences, rather than the stone age that was Aunt Natsumi’s girlhood. She tuned out Aunt Natsumi’s rambling as she tried to get her eyes to focus on everything her nose told her.

In addition to the Konoha nin who were mingling with the circus workers, there were many different exotic animals that she had only ever smelled from a great distance before. In a small grassy area, held in place by impossibly small ropes tethered from a hind leg to a simple stake in the ground, were gigantic gray creatures with wing-like ears that they flapped, and long prehensile noses. Tsume tugged on Aunt Natsumi’s blue and green pinstriped sleeve and pointed. “Are those _elephants_?”

A jovial voice from behind answered. “They are indeed, Tsume-chan!” Jiraiya squeezed himself between Aunt Natsumi and Tsume, throwing his arms out to drape them over each Inuzuka’s shoulders, and tugged them close. Tsume’s hair brushed his cheek as he stooped, although he was slightly taller than Aunt Natsumi. “Aren’t they beauties? They come from the most tropical parts of the Dark Continent. See, Tsume, how they’re tied to the stakes there?”

Tsume nodded, and resisted the urge to push Jiraiya’s arm away. “They must be very well trained to stay in place like that.” She would never be able to keep any of her ninken in place with a simple stake and rope.

“They are. A gigantic animal like that – thought to be the strongest of any animal ever—”

“Excuse me, I have some whales that would disagree.”

“—okay, strongest unsummoned _land_ animal ever – although I think you’re just quibbling over semantics, Natsumi-san – that could easily uproot the stake and make a break for freedom. But an elephant also has the greatest memory in the animal kingdom. An elephant never forgets. When the elephant is just a baby, it’s tethered in place with a rope and stake that are strong enough to hold it. If it tries to break away, the rope would cut into the baby elephant’s leg, and the discomfort worsens with increased struggle. Eventually, the baby elephant realizes that it can’t escape.”

Tsume scratched her head. “And since an elephant never forgets, then it understands it won’t escape and will only feel pain if it tries to escape as an adult, even if it could succeed?” It seemed immensely impossible to Tsume to never forget a thing, not to mention overwhelming. There was only a finite amount of room in her head, after all, and she still occasionally suffered headaches if too many thoughts and outward stimulus crowded all at once.

“You are correct, Tsume-chan. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Hastily wiping the drool from his mouth, Jiraiya slipped away from them to closely follow a pair of shapely women with elaborately coifed hair walking past. He moved without making a sound and rubbed his two hands together.

“Remember that,” Aunt Natsumi whispered.

“Remember what?”

Aunt Natsumi gestured towards the elephants. The copper bangles that she wore today rattled on her wrist. “Remember that elephants are conditioned from their birth to accept their captivity without question. They are not the only ones.”

Tsume turned the words over in her head as she led them to where the others congregated, surrounding Enkan as he stood atop a barrel where he could look down upon everyone. Was Aunt Natsumi talking about Tsume, the Inuzuka clan, or shinobi in general? Enkan was silent with his arms crossed behind himself, dark eyes sharp and thoughtful as he studied each face. Tsume elbowed around until she and her ninken joined Kushina’s side. Kushina balanced Kakashi on her hip; Sakumo stood beside them, craning his neck so he could look around. Orochimaru was also present, seated beneath a nearby tree. In the mottled shadows beneath the tree, he was as still as a statue, eyes shifting from person to person. He looked as bored as he smelled.

Tsume entertained herself by sniffing out the tigers (bored, hungry, restless) and comparing them to Danzo, who stood behind Enkan with shoulders hunched and arms crossed belligerently before himself (bored, hungry, restless). Then she worked on figuring out where Enkan’s clothes came from. The billowing blue pants had been dyed in the Land of Rivers, the cream-colored linen shirt that was open half-way down the front to reveal a thick matt of dark, curly chest hair had been obtained in the Land of Wind, and his cotton underwear had come from the Land of Water.

By the time that Tsume had figured out that the man’s socks was made from wool imported from the Land of Lightning but constructed in the Land of Wind, Yuu and his team had arrived, and Enkan was clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention. “I see that everyone arrived on time. Good job. Punctuality is an important characteristic in the circus. Everything is tightly scheduled in travel, set-up and tear-down, and performances. There is very little room for error."

He jumped off the barrel and stalked through people, eyes flickering from person to person. “Understand that you are mine for the entirety of your remaining presence. I _own_ you, body, mind, and soul. You will eat, breathe, sleep, and live the circus. In whatever capacity you are assigned, you will meet and exceed my every expectation.” He stopped at the edge of their group, and gave Aunt Natsumi a wry smile. “Which shouldn’t be difficult for any Konoha shinobi.” He turned around, snapping his heels together and raising his chin in the air. “For this next week, you will all learn how the circus runs – whether you are a star performer, or a sideshow act. You will be assigned as the following...”

Tsume waited for her name to be called out, but with every passing call in which she was ignored, as Kakashi was given to her so Kushina could follow a tall, slender woman with shiny caramel-colored hair and broad shoulders, she felt like finding a hole and pulling the dirt over her head. After everyone but Aunt Natsumi and Orochimaru had left (Sakumo had taken Kakashi and followed after Danzo with the circus foreman), Tsume felt awkward and out of place.

Enkan considered her with his sharp eyes as he tapped his fingertips together. “I have been told that you are a unique case.”

She hoped it had more to do with her nose and less to do with her brain injury.

“It was _strongly_ suggested,” his eyes flickered towards Sakumo’s direction with something similar to disdain, “that you are incapable of memorization. Is this true?”

Tsume did her best not to squirm self-consciously, especially when she felt Orochimaru’s gaze digging into her back. She knew there was an area in her brain that was dead, and she became more and more aware of it the longer she was a shinobi and had to face her limitations in learning different jutsus. Sakumo hadn’t taught her any elemental jutsu because he wanted her to focus on her clan techniques. She had tried to explain to him that the clan techniques were easy, because Kuromaru memorized most of what had to be done and provided reminders, and the techniques were primarily taijutsu anyway. (She was secretly jealous of Kushina learning a variety of Earth and Fire jutsu, and Kokoro learning a number of Water and Lightening jutsu. She could be given at least three to learn!)

“Memorization isn’t my strongest strength. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be useful!” she hastily added, because she was bound and determined not to get left behind, like Kokoro-chan apparently was going to be. At least Kokoro enjoyed her stints in the T&I, working side-by-side her older brothers, and feeling like she fulfilled an important function.

“How would you be useful to me if you’re not going to be able to learn what everyone else is required to learn?”

“I can cook.” She was very good at it, too, and everyone needed to eat. She could also seduce any man, but that was probably left unmentioned – it made Sakumo cringe every time she accidentally referred to her seal or stint as a prostitute, and she sure didn’t want to bring Orochimaru’s attention to the muted siren seal. “And I can tell you anything you want to know about upcoming weather changes, and who, what, and where of any destination… in a reasonable distance.” One that she could more-or-less calculate within 25% of its original distance. “And I can too learn, really. It just… it takes me longer and more work.” And the expectation that some details would always remain fuzzy, no matter how hard she tried. All too often, especially when faced with multiple questions, Tsume’s mind had a tendency to just shut down, and even the simplest questions seemed unanswerable.

“Hmm.” Enkan reached out and pinched a lock of hair between his fingers again. “I’ve never had an Inuzuka in my circus before. I’ve also been _strongly_ warned against separating you from your ninken.” His eyes flickered to Aunt Natsumi, but there was respect in his gaze and admiration in his scent. “I think I’ll make you into a sideshow – the girl who was raised by wild wolves and only recently returned to civilization from where you had been surviving in the wild of Iron. You brought along some of your wolf siblings, of course, since the ninken look close enough to wolves to pass the inspection of your average civilian. As for your training with the circus… well, if cooking what you’re good at, then you can help out with the kitchens. Gods know that those men require someone with a sense of _taste_. They can always use more dishwashers, and kitchen workers are usually too busy to help with set-up and tear-down because we circus people are a hungry, demanding bunch of babies.” Then he turned away from Tsume in a clear dismissal. “You,” he told Aunt Natsumi, “will take the place of my last fortune teller.”

She frowned at that. “What happened to your last one, and how the hell am I supposed to read someone’s future?”

“My last one was too drunk to see the sharp drop-off, and broke his leg. He wasn’t any good at reading the future, either. Just bullshit your way through it – you learned how to play cards from the Senju, after all. Wear significantly more tacky jewelry, speak vaguely, and you’ll do just fine. You’ve already got the extravagant and eccentric wardrobe down, so I won’t have to change much of anything about you.”

Aunt Natsumi sulked and smoothed down the front of her forest-green and tan plaid skirt. “I wear layers because I’m old and get cold easily.” She grumbled under her breath as Enkan glided away. Then she glared at Orochimaru. “What are _you_ supposed to do?”

He slid out of the shadows, as slick and as fluid as oil. “My job at the circus is to be the snake charmer.”

“Shocking,” Aunt Natsumi declared flatly, hand fluttering to her breast.

“I’m surprised that you wouldn’t be employed in like manner, given how many exotic creatures are at your disposal that the circus lacks.”

“Problem with that is that it requires chakra, and if we’re going into various enemy territories, we can’t let them know how many of us have developed chakra. My level is so great that I’m better off keeping it well-hidden.”

Orochimaru narrowed his eyes in irritation, probably because his chakra levels couldn’t match Aunt Natsumi’s. To be fair to Orochimaru, not many people did. Tsume suspected that Kushina probably would meet, or even surpass, Aunt Natsumi.

Since this entire mission was basically one long test to see whether she was ready to be a chuunin, Tsume figured that taking the initiative would weigh in her favor – that, and she didn’t want to stick around Orochimaru; he still gave her the creepy-crawly feeling and a strong need to bathe. Everyone else had left to learn about the circus, even though they were assigned people for orientation, so she decided that she could find the kitchens and introduce herself. After all, chuunin were assigned missions all the time and had to figure out where to meet their assignment with only minimal information.

So with the ninken trailing behind and Aunt Natsumi following after, Tsume followed her nose to what was obviously the kitchen tent. Orochimaru trailed along – damn it.

Well, the circus was probably like the wagon train, which meant everyone got crowded together, so she might as well just get used to having Orochimaru constantly encroaching into her personal territory. Chuunin were sometimes assigned to a mission with people they didn’t like, so it was the epitome of professionalism for them to get along despite the dislike to have a successful mission. Tsume was rather proud of her own maturity for thinking of this.

The kitchen tent was surrounded by various benches and garbage cans that had been recently emptied. The tent walls were raised and tied in place to allow the light spring breeze to drift through – the better in which to survive slaving over a hot grill in Konoha's summer weather. The only kitchen staff present were three unshaven old men, seated together at a folding table with cards and dice scattered between them. As Tsume approached, one gulped down a mouthful of spiked tea, the second puffed on a gigantic, foul-smelling cigar, and the third belched and scratched his exposed belly.

It had been a while since Tsume had seen that much hair on a human belly.

“Whatcha want, kid?” the second asked around his cigar.

“I’m with the Konoha team. Enkan told me to focus on helping out with the kitchen.” When the three men just stared at her blandly, scents disbelieving and bored, Tsume hastened to add, “You three look capable of cooking, and I’m quite skilled with washing dishes and general cleanup.” In Tsume’s two years of experience doing D-rank missions, cleanup of any sort was the most disliked part of any chore, and therefore made up the bulk of missions. Tsume figured that two years of washing dishes, pots, pans, scrubbing floors, repairing roofs and fences, and the occasional weeding and garbage pickup, had provided plenty of discipline and preparation in allowing her to work in what qualified as the circus mess hall.

Kushina had once complained that there was no purpose to D rank missions. Sakumo had merely smiled at her, ruffled her glorious red hair, and said, “When you have to infiltrate an enemy’s stronghold, remember that few look twice at the gardener who uses their skills to scope out the perimeter and changing shifts of the guards.”

Tsume always figured that if she had to assassinate someone, she’d just get a job in the kitchen and feed her target poisoned meatloaf. Or use her siren seal. (She inwardly cringed at the idea of using her seal on these three men, especially with Orochimaru standing behind her.)

The three men exchanged looks. The second tossed his cards on the table and scratched his jaw as he considered her. “Well, most people are more willing to clean up after the elephants than other human beings, so we can always use more help.”

The first made a rude noise as he hunched over his cards. “That’s ‘cause the elephants are a hair more grateful. They don’t snort down their food, chew with their mouths open, leave leftovers all over to attract the mice and flies, and have a fit when the food ain’t done to their specific liking.”

The third nodded his head in agreement as he sucked on his cigar. With smoke streaming from both nostrils, he pointed at the ninken. “What’s with all the dogs?”

Aunt Natsumi answered. “They’re Tsume’s ninken, and they go with her. Apparently, Tsume’s supposed to be a new sideshow.”

“What?” The third looked like a snorting dragon. “Enkan’s trying the whole raised in the wild by wolves shit, again?”

The second nudged the third. “At least the mutts look more realistically wild and wolf-like. The poodles with the last act were a little hard to swallow.”

Kuromaru raised his head and stared at the men, unblinking. “We’re Inuzuka ninken.”

The three men regarded the ninken silently, before the first, who smelled like a distant relation to the Inuzuka clan, finally grinned and said, “Well, I’ll be damned. He really _did_ find someone who was raised by a pack of wolves then. We could always use more authenticity around here, when everything is smoke, mirrors, and makeup.”

Tsume didn’t know how authentic a circus could be if it was run by a bunch of ninjas. Wasn’t deception the point?

The third stubbed his cigar out and stood. “Well, may as well show you around, kid. I want to make sure you know your ass from the dull end of a spoon before I let you just roam the kitchen. If nothing else though, you can pick up the garbage. Know you won’t miss anything – can probably hunt it down better with your nose than we could with all our glorious experience.”

Tsume and her ninken followed closely at the man’s heels, and she hoped that Kuromaru would be paying attention.

oOoOoOo

Enkan had Tsume and Hotaru assemble at his side around lunchtime. Wearing a stained apron, after she had been upgraded to “all around food-prepper” because she had been successfully able to identify every questionable spice the three cooks had (and pleased that her ninken had chosen to keep away all rats, mice, wild cats, and crows from the food storage), Tsume tried to ignore how the near-by Uchiha twins pointed and whispered at her.

Tsume was vindictive and petty enough to feel superior about how _she_ wasn’t singed at all, whereas the twins looked like they had been blasted with fire several times already. Their clothes were charred, their hair was singed, and they smelled like lamp oil.

Enkan impatiently waved the twins off. “Go get some food,” he said in mild disdain. He waited until the twins were out of earshot before he looked at Tsume and said, “I thought that the Uchiha were skilled enough with their katon jutsu to successfully _eat_ fire.”

Tsume figured that he was trying to make polite conversation with her. She wondered how a person ate fire – it sounded rather uncomfortable. “Uchiha normally spit the fire out in fireballs. It’s probably really weird for them to suck it all in.”

From behind, silent in her approach but her own scent of simmering resentment a dead giveaway, Hotaru said, “In my experience, Uchiha have a lot of difficulty in swallowing, especially their own pride, and they do take great pride in their Grand Fireballs.” Tsume gave Hotaru a friendly smile, which Hotaru managed to return with a nervous upturn of her lips. Tsume shuffled closer, because there was power in numbers and freaks had to stick together. The ninken crowded them, nudging Hotaru’s hands that were hidden in her voluminous sleeves. Some of the tension left Hotaru’s shoulders.

“How are you exploring the circus?” Enkan asked them.

Hotaru shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was busy taking care of the tigers’ flea infestation.”

“I helped fix lunch.” Cutting up the vegetables for the sloppy stew totally counted as cooking. And her teammates better be grateful! If Tsume hadn’t proved her proficiency with washing and chopping, then the stew would’ve been flavored with unwashed dirt clinging to choking hazard-sized potato and carrot chunks. She had also ninja-spiced it when the cooks weren’t looking with some cardamom, ginger, and a pinch of allspice. It was going to be delicious.

Enkan twirled one side of his waxed mustache as he regarded the two teenaged kunoichi. “Gods above know that lunch was probably beyond any repair. So, you both made yourself useful but you haven’t exactly found out everything about the circus.”

Hotaru ducked her chin so that her collar muffled her words. “With all due respect, sir, my kikaichu are spread out, supplying and feeding me information of which you wouldn’t be aware of. I know where everyone and everything is at, even if it’s not in the right place. Blame _that_ on your staff hitting the sake, early.”

“Me too. Well, I don’t have kikaichu,” Tsume hastened to add when Hotaru raised her eyebrows, “but I already found out everything – who people are, where they’ve been from, how they’re feeling, and the same with all the goods. By the way, when they serve the bread with tonight's stew, don’t eat it, because some mice got into the bread bag, so the cooks just tossed out what had been visibly chewed on, but just trust me when I say that some of the mice had some bad digestive problems.”

Enkan flashed his teeth in a smile – he had perfect teeth, almost blindingly white. “Well, that wasn’t what I meant, but you both come from clans where gathering Intel is something that is inherent in everything that you do. You’re both probably wondering why I want you to be sideshows, performances that highlight your abnormalities.”

Tsume didn’t have to wonder about Hotaru, but she remembered the way that Enkan had pinched a lock of her hair last night. Was her hair honestly _abnormal_?

Enkan turned his back to the girls, folding his hands behind himself and standing tall and straight as he surveyed the circus tents and the people moving around them. “Your companions will be spotlighted and their talents showcased. Why not you two? It’s just like the background workers. Everyone’s eyes will be upon the lovely lady in red as she poses with the elephants, but who pays attention to the elephant handler? As it is with the sideshows, onlookers will immediately categorize you – most likely as stupid, freakish, odd – and dismiss you. People will be unguarded, and they are at their most honest and vulnerable in such a state. It will be to your advantage as kunoichi, as neither of you are likely to be successful in the traditional intel-gathering of most kunoichi.”

The Inuzuka had relied on their nose for intel-gathering as long as the clan has been in existence. Tsume leaned close to Hotaru. “Psst. What’s the traditional intel-gathering?”

“Sex.”

Wait a minute… Tsume could be very successful in traditional sex if she wanted to! This whole thing was starting to metaphorically smell like a week-dead fish left in the sun. Tsume raised her voice. “So, Hotaru and I get to figure out how to get intel without seducing the enemy?”

Enkan’s expression was bored as he looked over his shoulder at them. “Don’t be ridiculous. You both have already figured it out. What neither of you, per word from your sensei, have learned is _which_ intel is useful and necessary, and what is superfluous and misleading. For all intents and purposes, this mission is nothing more than one large, continuous exam on your talents, skills, and leadership capabilities. It would behoove you to shore up your weaknesses and highlight your strengths.” With those final words, Enkan marched away.

Hotaru hunched further into her jacket. "Well, that was useful," she muttered into her collar. She dropped her voice in a low imitation of Enkan’s. " 'Let me insult you for making independent decisions since I couldn't be bothered to give you any decent direction, and then explain that it's your fault because you're just icky.' I am fairly sure that I hate this mission already, and we’re only two hours into something that’s going to be _months_ long."

After a moment, Tsume nudged her. “Hey, if you’re looking for a place to make yourself busy – besides the tigers’ cage, I mean – I bet the cooks would let you help out in the kitchens if you prove you can keep flies away from the food.”

Hotaru nodded her head. After a moment of following after Tsume, Hotaru said, “I should be used to people thinking that the Aburame are freaks. It’s just… I’m going to be put on display, and my bugs aren't freaky. They're _awesome._ "

Tsume patted Hotaru’s arm, careful not to crush some of the stray kikaichu that clung to Hotaru’s coat. “Well, ninja are all about display – although Danzo says that ninja are best not seen _or_ heard – so it’s more of an illusion for us.” Tsume understood genjutsu. “Other people are going to think whatever they want, and sometimes it’s not worth the effort of changing their mind.” That was probably the best thing she got out of her therapy with Yuu. “So go with the flow, and just be the best kunoichi you can be.” After a moment, she added, "Your bugs are _totally_ awesome." They were _totally_ better than wasps.

Hotaru smiled. “You make things seem so simple.”

Tsume shrugged as her hand slid away. “That’s what I am, Hotaru-chan. Simpleton Tsume.” She watched a curious kikaichu crawl across the back of her hand. She gently deposited it into her _abnormal_ (really???) hair.

Hotaru made a noncommittal sound that may or may not have been a disagreement, but some of the bitterness had eased out of her scent. Tsume made a mental note to talk to Hotaru’s teammates. Mooncalf and Osamu would need to give Hotaru more support, because even if they all had different duties now at the circus, they were still a team, and you just stick together with your team.

As she introduced Hotaru to Arata, Jurou, and Kohaku, Tsume did her best not to think about poor Kokoro-chan.

oOoOoOo

Within one day, Tsume more or less established the kitchen and eating area as her domain. She thought of it as such in her mind, and referred to it as such when she and Kushina described their first day to Kokoro that night, and the notion still hadn’t changed when she and Kushina met up with Sakumo the next morning.

“Look, I need to ask some questions,” Kushina began as they met together beneath a tree that was just starting to get shady. Sakumo had brought Kakashi along, and Kakashi was using chakra to throw sticks for Ichi and Ni to catch. It was early enough in the morning that the dew hadn’t burned off the grass yet, and Tsume sat beside Kushina and enjoyed the fresh scent of newly baked bread from the Akimichi district.

The Akimichi _always_ had the best best-smelling bakery goods. Tsume had been very sad when Cousin Chumou turned down Akimichi Shota’s courting attempts, because Shota always brought the most delicious freshest bread and donuts. Ever since Shota's heart was broken, Tsume and the rest of the Inuzuka were only allowed stale, day-old bread out of retaliation. Oyubi had to talk Tsume out of using her siren seal on Shota just for fresh mochi, two weeks ago.

( _“It’s not worth it, Tsume!”_

 _“But – but it’s_ fresh _mochi, Oyubi! Fresh! From the Akimichi bakery!”_

_“Stay strong. I know it’s tempting, and that it sometimes feels like the mochi is good enough to wage wars upon, but it’s not. Trust me – no mochi is worth the lecture you’d get from the Captain.”)_

“You may ask.”

“Everyone is going on about how this is basically just one big test to become a chuunin, but it’s still a mission, and I would still be expected to obtain as much intel as possible on a mission so I can succeed and not get killed.”

Sakumo smiled proudly and ruffled Kushina’s hair. “Yes.”

“And regardless of anything else, you’re _still_ our sensei.”

“Absolutely.”

“ _Why_ a circus, and why do I have to be an aerial silk dancer? I’m a kunoichi – I’m a warrior, born and bred, not some kind of trapeze _floozy_.”

“Hmm. Why indeed?” Sakumo folded his legs and leaned forward, regarding both girls with fondness. Tsume liked his scent as well, and today there was nothing sad or weighty about Sakumo’s scent. This was the best sort of morning. “We talked about this last month, when you all had to dress up as cleaning girls at Noburu Palace for extra security to make sure that his daughter's fiancé didn’t fly the coop before he made her an honest woman.” He looked at Tsume. “Do you remember what was said?”

Tsume wracked her memory as Kushina sulked. “Um. Something about how all those D rank missions were finally paying off because we didn’t look like amateurs who didn’t know one end of the feather duster from another and we wouldn't embarrass the noble family any more than their daughter getting knocked up outside of wedlock?"

Sakumo rubbed his chin. “Huh. Is that how I said it? Eh, close enough. Actually, proving how adept you are at being something you’ve never received the training on, especially something that seems antithesis to who or what you are, is part of the exam. Even as your sensei, I won’t be able to help you through this the way I’ve done in the past, Kushina. Genin are _reactive_ – I give the orders, and you obey. Chuunin are _proactive_. They need to get involved without guidance, and must adapt to unplanned situations and circumstances. This is your time to shine – figuratively speaking, since I know you’re going to be in the literal spotlight for this mission – and prove that you’re ready to become a chuunin. Just as we’ve accepted and performed all those missions that you girls didn’t like, so will you be assigned a mission you won’t like, performing some action or fulfilling a vocation that you won’t like as a chuunin.” As he spoke, Sakumo’s eyes flickered to Tsume, and his scent rippled with sorrow.

Kushina followed his gaze to Tsume, and her face fell. “Oh. I get it.”

Tsume decided to pay attention to Kakashi. Even though he was mature and smarter than her, he was still a toddler who needed to be watched after and taken care of. (Honestly – she’s moved on from the pain and the embarrassment, and couldn’t remember half of what happened anyway. How come other people couldn’t move on?) Kakashi was trying to talk Ni into walking on the nearby pond to fetch the floating stick, but Ni was refusing.

“I still don’t get why Kokoro-chan can’t come,” Tsume said, finally turning away from Kakashi as Ichi snagged the back of Kakashi’s shirt when he tried water-walking to the stick and dragged him back to Sakumo.

“Ah, just as the Hokage will assign missions that are suited to our strengths, so must we be tested on such. Kokoro will have her own test. She’s as active kunoichi in a wheelchair, Tsume. I don’t know if you realize just how rare it is that someone would be able to continue her career despite such a handicap, and she’s going to be severely limited at the circus. She’ll stick out like a sore thumb, and we’re testing you all on how well you blend in to whatever environment you’re assigned.”

“She could still ride San.”

“It would call doubt to you being raised by wolves in the wilderness and roaming half-wild if one of your ferocious wolves were seen giving a lift to a paraplegic teenager.”

Shi growled at Kakashi and scolded him for getting his shoes plastered with mud. 

“It’s not much of an act,” Tsume told Kushina when Kushina looked at her in question. The discussion they had last night didn’t get around to what their acts were supposed to be. Neither Kushina or Tsume had wanted Kokoro to feel worse about being left out. “Basically, I was abandoned at birth and raised by a pack of wild wolves. Enkan found and trapped me just a year ago, somewhere in Iron Country, but some of the pack insisted on staying with me, so now Enkan is trying to civilize me. I’m supposed to roam the circus grounds in basically no clothes and no paints, covered in dirt, and I get to growl and snarl at people like a wild savage.”

Kushina covered her mouth, but Tsume suspected it was more to hide her amusement than anything else. “So… in other words, you’re going to be just like the Inuzuka of old without the war paints.”

“Yeah, that’s what Aunt Natsumi said, but we’re still trying to figure out the costume.” Aunt Natsumi had also said that Tsume would have to wear a chest band, because “ _those little apples of yours may not bounce around a lot, but they should probably still be covered to protect the delicate Uchiha sensibilities._ ” Tsume didn’t really think there was anything delicate about the Uchiha, and didn’t care about protecting their sensibilities – she also didn’t know why Aunt Natsumi cared so much about protecting their sensibilities – but she did suspect that Mooncalf would be terribly embarrassed, and she didn’t really want to do that to him, especially after what he said to her yesterday evening.

_(“Hey, thanks for taking Hotaru-chan under your wing, Tsume.”_

_“It’s no problem. Enkan’s words really hurt her.”_

_“Yeah, I could see that. Usually she’s pretty laidback, but she’s feeling really self-conscious after that. Osamu and I will support her—we think she’s awesome – but you’ve got more freedom to be around her than we do, and the more support she gets the better.”_

_“Hey, don’t worry about it. We Konoha nin got to stick together, Mooncalf.”_

_“I know. It’s just…” He smiled at her, the worry dissipating from his face like the sun breaking through the heaviest layer of storm clouds. “Well, you’ve always looked after other strays, and it makes me feel better knowing that Hotaru-chan is in good hands.”_ )

“I think I’d much rather run around in dirt and rags and wild wolves than be crammed into silk again.”

“You’ll do just fine, Kushina.” Sakumo ruffled her wonderful red hair. The sun light up her hair with gold highlights, and Tsume wished her hair wasn’t spiky or brown or sticking up wildly like she got struck by a bolt of lightning chakra. “Your costume is probably much better than mine – I’ll be wearing a big red nose, white face paint, and a bright yellow costume.”

“Oh dear.” Kushina wrinkled her nose. “Yellow is _not_ your color, sensei.”

He sighed and shrugged. “I know. I tried to tell them that I would look much more grand in green, but I was firmly told I’m a clown – and clowns are not allowed anything grand. Such is how it goes with missions, Kushina. This isn’t the most flattering mission for _any_ of us, because misery loves company and all that, and we’ll all be keeping good company together. Now, let’s go before we’re late and Danzo decides to lecture us again on proper mission etiquette like he did two months ago.”

oOoOoOo

In establishing the kitchen wagon as her own personal territory, Tsume was in a good position to get all the gossip and to meet everyone. Most of the people agreed that the quality of food had definitely improved now that there was someone with an applicable knowledge of spices that extended beyond salt and stale garlic. With improved food flavor, other circus workers were more amiable towards what they considered to be an intrusion of outsiders.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jo-chan.” Ami-chan was one of the older aerial silk dancers, and was also training Mikoto and Kushina. Up close, Tsume could see the fine lines that surrounded the woman’s mouth, and just how deeply her cheeks were sunken. From a distance and with judicious stage makeup, Ami-chan was a stunning woman of indeterminable age. “Before the war, Enkan would run this mission for Konoha every three years or so. He makes quite the profit, and those of us who help train the little ninjas get year-end bonuses. Thing is, it’s not permanent. These apprentices are fleeting and temporary. Pour me another cup of tea, sweetie.”

Tsume obeyed. The combined odor of cinnamon and orange peel was a heady combination to her, but it was the most popular contribution that she had made. The tea also helped mask the old, stale scent of alcohol that permeated Ami-chan’s pores. Ami-chan sadly reminded her of the oldest ladies who worked with Madame Haori – the ones still too popular to retire, but who had burned out long ago.

“Everyone,” Ami-chan continued, “wants to leave behind a legacy. Some leave ‘em big, some leave ‘em small. But we all want to leave our mark behind when we die. To you ninja, this is just another mission. It probably means more because it’s, like, your testing grounds, but you’ll move on, and we’ll still be here, deprived of our legacy.”

"I thought the circus people are also ninja."

Ami-chan snorted. " _We_ are circus first, ninja second."

That made the most sense to Tsume. It sounded like how Tsume was Alpha first, Kunoichi second.

After Ami-chan left to continue Mikoto’s training, Arata warned Tsume not to let Ami-chan fall into a maudlin mood again. “Most of us are pretty damn happy with this life, kid. Some, like Ami-chan, had big dreams for the future in her youth, and they didn’t quite pan out the way she had hoped. We just don’t like the outsider ninja moseying in on our turf because they’re newcomers that we have to break into the circus life, and then get to see the backs of in just a few months.”

Tsume didn’t think that her teammates were subjected the same level of nitty-gritty regrets and maudlin moods. She suspected that it was partly because her teammates were too busy with learning how to set up and tear down the circus in addition to learning their new acts like an intense training for a particularly tricky, high-ranking jutsu, and partly because others considered her _safe_. Enkan had been right – Tsume was instantly categorized and dismissed as someone who wasn’t important, because there didn’t seem to be any particular skill needed to play a savage wild child. Of course, her habit of mothering Kakashi in public – especially given how Sakumo left Kakashi in her care while he learned the ins and outs of the circus with the rest of the Konoha nin – probably went very far in establishing how safe she seemed.

One of the cooks was not fooled. “The others may not know the history of the Inuzuka, but I do.” Jurou lit one of his fat cigars and puffed smoke rings towards Tsume, because he knew how much it irritated her.

“You’re an abandoned son, aren’t you?” His scent mixed with her family scent intrigued her, but his Inuzuka mother must’ve died before Tsume was born, because she couldn’t remember the mother’s scent.

He laughed. “Well, now, I wouldn’t say _abandoned_. My mother was an Inuzuka who had a torrid affair with a circus strong man years before Enkan inherited the troupe from his father. Somehow, my mother’s genes canceled out my father’s genes. I can’t smell my way out of a paper bag, and the only things I’m good at lifting are the thirty-kilo bags of produce. My dad was very disappointed – I think he wanted me to become a Konoha shinobi or something. Nope; ‘tis the circus for me, and not even as an act. And you’re not putting up much of an act either, even if no one else can see it. If anyone tried to harm one silver hair on that child’s head, there would be hell to pay.”

In Tsume’s mind, there were too many details in the gossip, and not enough information. She tried to take Enkan’s words to heart, of being able to parse out the necessary from the superfluous, but she felt adrift and useless. Tsume spent four days getting comfortable with her kitchen job and occasionally mediating between Danzo and the wardrobe master – the wardrobe master wanted to stick Tsume in some ill-fitting furs, to which Danzo declared that Tsume’s tan lines would be too obvious, which in turn made Tsume wonder if she was going to have to sun-bathe nude to get the authentic look of raised-in-the-wild-by-wolves that Danzo demanded, because Danzo felt that authenticity was _always_ a mission requirement. Then Tsume figured that it would be unsafe to sunbathe nude anywhere, because Jiraiya was _everywhere_ , and she hoped that Danzo would understand her reluctance.

Starting the fifth day, Tsume roamed the circus with her ninken and Kakashi on tow to get a feel of people’s movements. Her nose could tell her so much – too much, in many cases – so she needed to incorporate her eyes. No one had really said or implied what she needed to do to prove her worthiness as a chuunin, except the twins had told her on the third day that she was unlikely to pass because being a chuunin required crafted thinking skills, and she was too much of a simpleton to succeed. Tsume had strategized with Kokoro on the fourth night, and while Kokoro agreed that Tsume’s thinking skills were definitely on the weaker side, she didn’t think such was insurmountable.

(“ _The thing is, Tsume-chan, when you **do** think, you’re just unconventional. Most people’s thoughts are based off of the knowledge that they acquire, and they usually acquire such with their eyes. Humans in general are very visual creatures, but many of us are also auditory learners – we learn best when we hear direction. Your nose gives you a different base of knowledge that the rest of us doesn’t understand, and you rely on your nose to the extent that you barely use your eyes or your ears. So start using your eyes and ears more, because that’s the kind of intel people want. They really couldn't care less about the last things someone ate or drank.”)_

Tsume had tried using her ears, but people had a tendency of talking without really saying anything at all, so she decided to focus on using her eyes. To help hone this skill, she dulled her sense of smell as much as she could and expected Kuromaru to pick up the slack.

One of the elephant handlers noticed Tsume’s wandering and decided to give her and Kakashi an impromptu lesson in circus safety. It started out as a lecture about maintaining safe distances and how to direct crowds in case of emergencies, but was soon sidelined when Kakashi, looking as cute and as innocent as he possibly could, politely asked if he could feed one of the baby elephants.

Melting from the onslaught of Kakashi’s adorableness, Baki agreed that Kakashi could feed one of the elephants _just one_ banana.

“The elephants aren’t dangerous, are they?" Tsume asked as Kakashi peeled the banana with an intense expression.

“Not very, no. If there’s a fire, they’ll run like any other sensible animal. With creatures _this_ size, you need to stay out of the way because humans just aren't that large of an obstacle to them. A fire will also create a panicked crowd, which will feed into the animals’ anxiety, what with all the screaming and fear.”

Tsume nodded her head and tried her best to remember what Baki said. When he started explaining what happened ten years ago – a fire erupted in the main tent, the main tent collapsed, and over a hundred people were crushed or burned to death – Tsume concentrated on the fleeting horror she saw in his face, and the tension in his voice.

“And ever since that’s happened, everyone has to go through mandatory safety training. I didn’t see you there at it yesterday.” Baki glared disapprovingly at Tsume. Kakashi giggled as the baby elephant’s nose roamed over his hair.

Tsume pondered what she did yesterday. “Hotaru-chan and I were cleaning out the meat lockers.” That had been an independent decision on their part, all things considering. And after they cleaned out the moldy meat, ignoring the comment from Jurou that a little bit of vinegar would clean the meat up “ _and be good as new, no slime or mold or anything,”_ Tsume talked Orochimaru, who was practicing near-by with his snakes, into renewing the cold seals on the lockers.

After Orochimaru took one look at the pile of spoiled meat that Tsume’s ninken were busy digging a deep hole in which to bury said pile, Orochimaru complimented Hotaru and Tsume for their insight and work. Since Orochimaru was one of their chuunin judges, Hotaru and Tsume thought that they were doing pretty good so far.

It suddenly occurred to Tsume that missing a mandatory safety meeting probably didn’t look good on her record. She wondered if Orochimaru had misled them with his compliments, luring them into a sense of false security and pride. Sakumo liked to say that a shinobi’s ego could get himself killed faster than any enemy. On the other hand, the way through anyone’s good side was through their stomach, and since Orochimaru got fed with the rest of the circus, maybe he just appreciated not getting food poisoning on top of having to supervise a bunch of snot-nosed genin and chuunin.

As Kakashi was exploring the elephant’s ear, pulling it one way and another to check out the texture and flexibility, Tsume hastened to say, “Food poisoning can be very dangerous, too.”

Baki’s expression was miserable as he nodded his head. “That’s true – and always a risk around here so long as Enkan lets those idiots anywhere close to the food. I guess I won’t give you too much of a bad time. Why don’t you go get this Hotaru-chan, and I’ll give you both the mandatory safety training. You’ll need to have it done by the time Enkan rounds everyone up tonight for a trial run of their individual acts.”

“I’ll be right back.” Tsume turned to Ichi and Kuromaru. “Watch Kakashi.”

It was easy enough to find Hotaru, even with her sense of smell pushed down to its lowest levels. Hotaru was practicing knots with Osamu in the shade of one of the smaller tents. “I already got all the mandatory safety training,” she said patiently after Tsume explained why she needed to borrow Hotaru. “One of my kikaichu was with Osamu, and told me everything.”

Tsume’s nose never would’ve told her anything about the actual safety training – just the people involved, and a small insight into their activities. There would be very little information on _how_ to be safe. She was slowly realizing what other people meant when they said her amazing sense of smell was still a limit to overcome.

“It would still be good for you to go,” Osamu told his teammate. “There’s some drills they make you do, and seeing and doing are two different things. Everyone should have hands-on practice.”

Hotaru stared at her hands for a moment. “I suppose you’re right. Just like with the knots – you don’t have a true feel for it until you’ve actually practiced.” She carefully set the ropes and knots aside and jumped off the upside-down barrel she had been seated on.

Tsume couldn’t blame Hotaru for wanting to remain with Osamu – he was her teammate, they had stayed at each other’s sides through a war, and Tsume was only a makeshift substitute. But Tsume was trying to be supportive and friendly, because Hotaru was Konoha, and that made Hotaru one of Tsume’s own. An alpha _always_ looks after her own.

Baki was looking (and smelling) flabbergasted by the time Hotaru and Tsume arrived. “The dog talks,” he told Tsume with a flat voice.

Tsume assumed he meant Kuromaru. Kuromaru had been getting speech lessons from Pakkun and Kakashi’s other summons ever since they got stuck together when Aunt Natsumi left Konoha with the Uchiha on tow two years ago, because Kakashi was difficult to take care of without verbal communication. Tsume was very proud of Kuromaru, because he was one of the few ninken who chose to learn human speech. Grandmother’s ninken had indicated quite strongly that they had no interest in doing the same, including San, even though San enjoyed working with Kokoro despite Kokoro not understanding the ninken’s body and scent language.

“I tried to tell him that letting Kakashi ride the elephant would be encouraging unreasonable expectations," Kuromaru said.

Hotaru glanced over. “Ah. Is that why Kakashi is balancing on the large elephant?”

“WHAT?” Baki whipped around. “What are – how did – get down from there right now, kid!”

As Baki rushed over to where the large elephant was placidly browsing the grass and happily ignoring the toddler balancing on top of its head, Hotaru nudged Tsume. “So, is Kakashi an example of what not to do for our safety training?”

Tsume turned to Ichi. “I thought I told you to watch him.”

Ichi was smug as he wagged his tail and rolled his tongue at her. _I did watch him. I watched him all the way up the back of the elephant. Perhaps you should’ve been more specific about whether or not I was also supposed to intervene._

Tsume decided that didn’t deserve the dignity of a response. When Baki returned with Kakashi tightly tucked beneath an arm, she tried not to look too guilty. Baki sat Kakashi down beside Kuromaru with more force than was probably warranted, and turned to the two genin with a look of concentration. “Your first priority – beside yourselves – will be our guests. A deadly disaster could easily spell the end of the season for us, which is a financial disaster for _us_.”

Tsume did her best to concentrate on remembering what Baki said about where the emergency exits were located, how to direct crowds in different sections to their assigned emergency exits, and how maintain control in a panicked environment. Then he talked about how different performers would be expected to assist in disasters in different manners. After thoroughly lecturing the two girls, he set them off to the main tent to inspect their surroundings, and report back to him which sections should be directed to which exits.

And because Baki looked distressed with the idea of Kakashi being left behind to watch Baki wash the elephants, Tsume brought Kakashi and her ninken along.

“I don’t have to learn this,” Kakashi said, trying to sound reasonable as he wiggled in Tsume’s arms so he could watch Baki.

Tsume tightened her grip on Kakashi. “You never know when you’ll have to infiltrate a circus, and knowing where the emergency exits – or any exit at all – is a vital ninja skill. Right, Hotaru-chan?”

“Absolutely.”

Kakashi went still in Tsume’s arms. She didn’t have to look at his face to know that he was thinking something sly and sneaky. Then he curled his arms around her neck and whispered in her ear, “Mission accepted.”

Tsume couldn’t shake the feeling that she ought to be alarmed with Kakashi’s words, but that was soon lost when she and Hotaru entered the main tent. It was far, far larger than any of the other tents, held aloft in the center by three poles that were easily forty meters tall. A circle of shorter poles around the inside parameter continued to hold up the tent, allowing the roof to slope slightly. Several people were already present in the tent, including Mikoto and Kushina, who were both climbing the long strips of silk and practicing different poses. It looked like they were doing katas suspended in mid-air, and the pull of gravity did nothing to decrease their grace or agility.

Hotaru had to poke Tsume twice to redirect her attention to the exits. The spectator sections were filled with rough-hewn chairs, fallen logs, and a number of well-worn mats for people who preferred to kneel or sit. The tent’s walls parted at various junctions with hand-written signs posted above, reading _Exit (number)._ Some of the circular-standing poles were also numbered, and Hotaru and Tsume talked about how the people in the sections would have to exit with the corresponding number.

“Makes sense,” Hotaru said. “That keeps each exit from being overwhelmed with a flood of panicked people.”

“ _If_ they have the sense to go to their correct exit,” Tsume replied. She wasn’t doing a very good job at paying attention to said exits herself – she kept looking back to where Kushina was spinning upside-down in the silk, her long red hair a shimmering curtain beside the emerald-green silk.

“I can do that,” Kakashi said, turning a dismissive eye away from Kushina.

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t look nearly as pretty,” Hotaru said.

“But I _can_ do that.”

Tsume bet that Kushina would look way better half-naked in furs than Tsume would, but Kushina also wouldn’t be as comfortable. Kakashi would probably have way too much fun wandering around half-naked in furs.

Hotaru, Tsume, and Kakashi explored the big tent for a little while longer to familiarize themselves with the setup and the corded-off areas where performers waited and prepped themselves. They found the Uchiha twins, scraping off another layer of charcoal from their skin.

“Not having much luck with swallowing that fire?” Tsume asked.

Ringo glared at her. “Better luck than you rolling around in the dirt with the rest of the mongrels. Where’s your costume? You’re supposed to be ready for tonight just like the rest of us.”

Tsume was unaware of the need to be ready for anything, and she was pretty sure that it wasn’t just because someone told her and she forgot. Tsume followed Hotaru’s tugging until they were out of earshot of the twins.

“I don’t have a costume either,” Hotaru said once they exited the building.

Tsume scratched her head as she tried to think. “Well, I was abandoned as a baby and raised in the wild by a pack of wolves, and I guess my costume is supposed to reflect that. What’s your story?”

Hotaru tucked her chin down so that her collar hid most of her lower face. “No one’s given me a story, so I think I’ll just tell people that I ran away from home and joined the circus because no one else wanted me around. It’s always best to keep your story as close to the truth, right?”

Oh, that made Tsume feel even worse. Even though she and Hotaru had both been more-or-less waved off to the side and ignored in favor of their better-looking comrades, at least Enkan had paid enough attention to Tsume to come up with a story. Hotaru didn’t even get that. “You really can’t wear anything that would highlight the bugs though, right? Because they’re sensitive to light.”

Hotaru’s answering smile was breathtaking as her scent flooded with happiness. Tsume wasn’t sure what she said to make Hotaru feel so delightful. “I’m glad you remembered.”

“Maybe you can try a trench coat? I mean, instead of making yourself obvious the way that I have to, you can make yourself even more mysterious. Wear the sunglasses that your clan normally does, turn up a high collar…”

“Dress like my other clanmates? Wouldn’t that be obvious to people that I’m an Aburame? That would just make it all the more strange that I ran away from home.”

“Oh yeah.” Tsume wracked her brain for more ideas. “Maybe you can skip the sunglasses and the wide collar, and just wear a big straw hat instead.”

“I could do that. It might not pass muster, but it’s better to have something on hand than not be prepared at all.”

They met with Baku and ran through several more scenarios for safety – such as what to do if the tigers were ever released, and _no, Kakashi, you’re not going to be here to summon Pakkun as a distraction in such a scenario, so that idea doesn’t count, besides, Pakkun wouldn't appreciate being tiger bait_ – before they were dismissed.

“What time are we supposed to meet with the others?” Tsume asked Hotaru.

“Well, when everyone starts to gather, I imagine we’ll know by then.”

Tsume stopped by at the food tent to let her fellow cooks know that she would have to leave the circus to grab her costume. They barely looked up from the rice balls they were forming to acknowledge her impending absence. At least they had washed their hands before prepping the rice balls, so her lengthy tirade over how just because they couldn’t see the filth on unclean hands didn’t mean she couldn’t smell it seemed to have made an impact.

With Kakashi riding Kuromaru, Tsume and her ninken rushed all the way back to her compound. Of course the circus would have to be on the other side (the far side) of Konoha from her place. With it being mid-afternoon, not a lot of people were out and about yet, so Tsume was able to make good time in crisscrossing the Hidden Village.

In the attic where she had tucked away most of the things she never used, Tsume pried open a wooden box where a number of traditional Inuzuka clothes were stored away. Kakashi sneezed at the cloud of dust that she disturbed when she pushed the lid off and pawed through the musty fur and leather. She laid everything out and scrutinized every piece, silently asking herself if it appeared authentically raised-in-the-wild. Clothing that was next to falling apart was tossed back into the box because she didn’t want to unexpectedly flash her nipples or anything else at the Uchiha… or her brother, she considered, because Shikaku was kinda shy like that.

After selecting the pieces that smelled and looked the best, Tsume stripped down entirely while Kakashi entertained himself by poking through other boxes in the attic. The leather girdle sat loosely around her flat hips, but she tightened the thong ties until she was fairly sure that it was unlikely to fall off. A few cautious jumps and high kicks in front of a cracked, full-length mirror assured her that the girdle was secure and nothing unfortunate flashed too much, but also reminded her that Aunt Natsumi had wanted her to cover her chest.

Breast bands had long been unconventional for Inuzuka women, but there were some wide leather straps used to carry swords and axes that Tsume was able to rig in such a way that they crossed her chest in an X and conveniently hid her barely-there tits, cinching tight so they wouldn't slip. She added a few leather thongs to her hair, pushing the strands away from her forehead, tied some raven feathers to a few couple locks of hair, added some caltrops in deference to tradition, and then covered her shoulders with a fringed poncho.

“Do I look wild enough?” she asked Kuromaru, holding her arms around.

He sniffed disdainfully. “You smell like an elk that died fifty years ago.”

Tsume wiggled her toes and considered her bare feet. She rifled through the trunk again and managed to find a pair of hard-bottomed leather sandals that would protect her soles from stepping on broken glass, thistles, thorns, or other uncomfortable objects. As the final part of her costume, Tsume added a scuffed pouch that an ancestor had carefully beaded, and slung it around her neck. Feeling that her outfit as a wild child was complete, Tsume studied herself in the mirror. She stared at herself critically, searching for flaws in the costume.

“You look like you’re trying too hard,” Kakashi said, trying to be helpful.

There _did_ seem to be an obscene amount of old leather. Tsume pulled off the poncho and let it slump on the floor beside the mirror. Now she was showing more skin than she typically did, and she realized that the crossed leather straps might prove to be inadequate when her breasts finally got that growth spurt she was hoping for…

“Much better,” Kakashi declared. Tsume gave another few jumping jacks to make sure things stayed secured - the crossed straps gaped open, flashing pink nipples, when she lifted her arms over her head. Well, that’s sure going to embarrass poor Mooncalf _and_ Sakumo.

Ah, well, the straps could easily be secured later with some well-placed nipple pasties and body glue. Tsume rubbed at her cheeks where her clan markings were visible. “I better take these off.” Then she dropped her hands away and briefly wondered what she would look like if she had her guardians drawn upon her chest and torso. Yeah, a porcupine wouldn’t be impressive, so she really hoped that she got a wolf or a badger summon.

Despite the leather, she still seemed too… tame, for lack of a better word. Tsume stared a few more moments, turning this way and that, critically wondering what was wrong with what she saw. “I need dirt,” she said finally, after washing away her clan markings. She led her entourage outside to one of the dog pens, selected the driest dirt mound that was dog poop-free, and then rolled around in it, coating all her visible skin with dirt. Kakashi looked on with jealousy, held in place by Kuromaru’s teeth in the back of his shirt.

“How come I don’t get to be dirty?”

Tsume dropped a fistful of dirt in her hair and rubbed it around with her eyes squeezed shut. “Because this is part of my disguise, Kakashi. You have to be willing to go all-out for a mission if it requires you to. Some missions are a lot of hard work, and you just gotta do it.”

“But getting dirty is fun. That’s not hard work.”

Tsume really ought to know better than to argue with a four year old as freakishly-intelligent as Kakashi. “Well, some missions are also a lot of fun, but you can’t let that make you lose focus on a successful mission.” Then she lifted Kakashi to Kuromaru’s back. “As much fun as it is to roll around in the dirt, I still have to return and do my mission. Let’s go!”

Her departure from the compound was delayed by the arrival of Uchiha Kagami.

oOoOoOo

Tsume knew Kagami was approaching her compound, and had ignored it. It wasn’t unusual for the Head of Internal Affairs to pop over and request some assistance from the Inuzuka for something that required a keen sense of smell. He usually didn’t have a preference for who provided such; he always seemed content with whoever was readily available. 

Kagami smiled brightly when Tsume opened the gate, expecting to leave without interference. He immediately bowed, his expression and scent giving no judgment on her current dress and filth. “Ah, Tsume-sama, just the person I was seeking.” He was wearing his ceremonial Head of Internal Affairs outfit – the fancy ones whenever he needed to make his presence known at the Clans Council when they gathered to discuss matters pertaining to active work for shinobi, as a representative to those who didn’t have a voice, but wound up being effected nonetheless by decisions made: the orphaned, clanless, and civilian-born ninja. The outfit was midnight black, tailored and cut to his lean figure, high-collared and trim, his waist wrapped in a crimson sash with the loose ends dangling at his knees. The red color was the only concession he made to identify himself as part of the Uchiha clan.

Whether he represented the orphaned and clanless, or pursued reports received by Internal Affairs, Kagami unaffiliated himself with his clan so no one could ever accuse him of favoritism. Although Tsume wasn’t sure who would have the audacity to accuse Uchiha Kagami of nepotism to his face or behind his back – even the Hyuuga, almost as famous for fighting the Uchiha as the Senju were, couldn’t accuse Kagami of favoring his clan. His clothes were impeccable and immaculate. If it weren’t for his fluffy, wild-for-Uchiha hair and the quickened breath (he steadfastly ignored how the quick stride from his place to her compound left him panting for air, so Tsume did too), he would’ve been the picture of well-groomed perfection.

Next to him, half-naked in her leathers and face bare of her clan markings, covered from head to foot with dust, Tsume felt like a filthy turd.

Tsume’s grip on Kakashi’s hand tightened. “Is this important? Because I got to be at the circus for my mission. Like, right now. I think.” She was pretty sure that she needed to be at the circus _at this very moment_ , as everyone was starting to gather together around Enkan. She cringed at the thought of showing up late.

Kagami clasped his hands together and bowed deeply, his forehead dipping below his waist. That was _so_ not protocol. As Head of Internal Affairs, he technically ranked higher than any clan head, wasn’t subject to the Head Jounin’s authority, and answered only to the Hokage. He had the power to investigate clans without political repercussion, and could destroy reputations in a heartbeat if the results of his investigation required it. “I am actually here on an important, although personal, mission.” He straightened, but kept his hands clasped together. “I need to speak to Tsume-sama about honor and love. Although,” his smile was mischievous as he winked, “I am not above abusing the power of my position to justify your delay, in this matter.”

Kagami smelled of sincerity and hope, shaded slightly with trepidation and love. There were layers of individual Uchiha scents surrounding him, the most prominent being Hiroaki’s scent (also layered with fear, love, pride, and fire). It was hard to believe that this affable man was the second most politically powerful individual in the entire Village.

Tsume released Kakashi’s hand. “Take Kuromaru and wait for me at the circus,” she told him. “Tell your dad that the Head of Internal Affairs needs to speak privately with me.” She wasn’t above abusing Kagami’s position either, especially when it came to making her look good in front of her examiners. The opportunity for either of them to use Kagami’s position for personal means seemed like an unusually rare event for Tsume, so that alone was enough to pique her curiosity. The fact that he was referring her to –sama was enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Kakashi straightened up, and nodded his head firmly. “Mission accepted,” he declared solemnly. He pulled himself up on Kuromaru’s back, and with one more solemn nod of his head, dug his heels into Kuromaru’s sides.

“Be nice, he’s not Juubi!” Tsume yelled at him. Then she waved Kagami inside. “We can do this in my kitchen. Uh, would you like some tea?”

“It’s kind of you to offer, Tsume-sama, but not necessary. I don’t wish to cause that much of a delay.”

Kagami said nothing else as Tsume led him to her house, and into the kitchen. She pulled a chair out to him, more in deference to his age than anything else, and then seated herself. She laid her hands flat on the table and tried to look as dignified as she could, despite the trail of dirt that fell out of her hair onto the kitchen table. She brushed the dirt off. That was, uh, totally supposed to happen.

Kagami bowed his head over clasped hands once again. “I am not here as a representative of the Uchiha clan, or as the Head of Internal Affairs. As I said before, this is actually a personal matter of love and honor. As his older brother, I inherited the legal guardianship of Uchiha Hiroaki, upon the death of our parents, and so I am here on his behalf.”

“Oh.” Tsume hadn’t thought of the involvement of legal guardianship with Hiroaki, or even with Shinchuu. She distantly realized, because of their low function, they had to be wards to someone. “If this is about his relationship with Shinchuu-chan, you should probably speak to her mother, Bashira.”

The smile dropped away from his face. Kagami regarded Tsume with uncharacteristic seriousness. “I did, two days ago. Bashira-san is pleased that her daughter is happy, and feels that Hiroaki always had, and always will, treat her kindly. However, guardianship for Shinchuu belongs to the head of the clan. It was originally Shinzou’s. When she died, _Tsume-sama_ inherited the guardianship.”

Tsume was pretty sure, in the two years that she was the clan head, that no one had ever mentioned this. And it was pretty lousy for her to be hearing it for the first time from an outsider. Huh. In retrospect, maybe her being the legal guardian was why Bashira hadn’t openly protested the idea of Shunchuu keeping the baby if it was a boy, rather than because Tsume was alpha queen bitch. Bashira, like other gammas, never did seem all that impressed with Tsume’s posturing…

“As you well know, Shinchuu and Hiroaki are...” Kagami paused for a moment, as if unsure of how blunt he should be with Tsume. “Intimately close.”

“She’s pregnant,” Tsume blurted. “Everyone said it was impossible – Grandmother supposedly made sure that Shinchuu could never get pregnant again.”

“I am aware.”

“Shinchuu wants to keep the baby, regardless of it being a girl or boy. We’re not even sure that this pregnancy is going to last. The first three months are the likeliest for miscarriage, especially when fallopian tubes heal from cauterization.” She had discussed this with her father; Shikake had explained that cauterization of fallopian tubes wasn’t a 100% foolproof birth control that so people many thought it was. He had also immediately referred Shinchuu to Sarutobi Biwako, who specialized in high-risk pregnancies, because pregnancy after a tubal meant an extremely high risk of an ectopic pregnancy. 

Kagami nodded his head. “Of this, I am also aware. Years ago, Chumon-sama was not pleased with the first pregnancy, and it was quite obvious that he resented Hiroaki too much to have my brother’s best interests at heart. Normally, heads of clan hold guardianship over people, such as my brother and Shinchuu. After your grandmother and my clan head had their _very_ public disagreement, our parents received a formal guardianship from the Hokage. While they were alive, our parents forbade my brother from forming further romantic liaisons with anyone else. Well, actually, it was more my mother’s doing; I don’t think my father cared at all. But Hiroaki never wanted for anyone else. He pined for two decades. He wrote letters to Shinchuu every day for the first ten years, but my mother burned them.”

Tsume felt her heart melt. That was so _sad_ , and yet _so romantic,_ she thought. Two people, forbidden to be together despite being so madly in love, one writing letters every day for years… “Well, Shinchuu can’t read anyway,” she muttered as she felt her cheeks turn red.

“My father was killed in action ten years ago. My mother died of rheumatic fever five years ago.” He was silent for a moment. “After her death, Chumon-sama transferred the guardianship to me, upon my request. I love my brother, Tsume-sama. He is slow with understanding, but just because his speed is less, doesn’t mean he won’t eventually reach the same understanding as the rest of us, at least not in the matters of the heart. He is not _stupid_. After he learned that Shinchuu was pregnant again, Hiroaki came to me, and asked for my permission to marry her.”

Tsume tried to wrap her mind around Shinchuu getting married. She tried to wrap her mind around _any_ Inuzuka clanswoman getting married. Some choose to take exclusive lovers, but it wasn’t the norm. Many even found love – but life was frequently short amongst ninja, and such relationships frequently ended with someone dying, and so new relationships were made.

“I had told him at the time that I didn’t feel it was appropriate. After all, a man must support his wife. He’s had a stable job for years, assisting with the public street cleaning, and he takes great pride in doing his job well.” Kagami closed his eyes and massaged his brow. Far from being annoyed or exasperated, he spoke with loving fondness. “The imp showed me his bank account. Unbeknownst to myself _or_ our parents, he has been saving an impressive amount of money for the last twenty years. I’m not even sure how – legally, he’s not even supposed to own a bank account without a guardian being listed as an account holder, but he’s as sneaky as any Uchiha. He had planned for the eventuality of Inuzuka Shinzou’s death. He told me about how he had planned, for twenty years, to ask the next clan head to marry the love of his life, and that they would live together in their own apartment, away from the grounds of either clan. The timing just never worked out well to his favor after Shinzou’s death, what with the war ending, and you being so young. And now that she’s told him of the pregnancy, Hiroaki feels that the time has come to let the world know that he is a man, and Shinchuu is his woman.”

Tsume was still stuck on trying to wrap her mind around any Inuzuka woman getting married. Her brain hurt. She knew that Sakumo would’ve gladly married her sister, but he never offered, because Hidarime would’ve refused, just on the grounds of clan tradition. But it probably wouldn’t have stopped her from moving off of the clan compound into Sakumo’s house.

“Because I hold guardianship, Hiroaki cannot enter anything legally resembling a marriage without my permission. The same is true of Shinchuu. Hiroaki asked my permission to approach you for Shinchuu’s hand. I haven’t granted it yet, as I need to know if you would permit such.”

Tsume’s mouth dropped open. “ _Me_?” No one… no one had ever asked Tsume of anything with such solemn intent, as if she were an equal, or even an adult. She was fourteen years old. Hiroaki and Shinchuu were more than twice her age. Hell – they already had a child who was older than Tsume. It was discomforting. She almost looked over her shoulder to see if Grandmother’s spirit wasn’t hovering nearby. It didn’t help that Tsume was feeling very naked, dressed in some skimpy leather wraps and a girdle and lots of dirt, and Kagami was covered from the pit of his throat to his toes in his pristine, well-tailored suit.

Kagami’s expression became almost angry as he focused on her face, cold intent glimmering in his eyes. He hadn’t shifted into the Sharingan, but there was a hint of red in his gaze. “My brother wants to make a formal, public request for Shinchuu’s hand in marriage. I will _not_ have him publicly embarrassed if you plan to forbid such.”

“Because he’s an Uchiha?”

“No. Because he is my brother, and he’s every bit as deserving of respect and dignity as anyone who is considered _normal_. Chumon-sama and Shinzou made a public spectacle of his love. My clan belittled him. They accused him of being a shame to our clan, to our honor and reputation. Strangers mocked my brother, calling him a clod of dirt who was incapable of holding an erection, much less impregnating a woman. He has had to live with _twenty years_ of insults.

“My brother has never been trained to be a shinobi – his heart has holes; he hasn’t the stamina for it. He is one of the gentlest, kindest souls that I have the honor of knowing. But his Sharingan bloomed, Tsume-sama. The Sharingan is the eye that reflects the heart. It is borne through trial and through terror; it awakens from the absolute need to protect our loved ones. About one in three Uchiha will never awaken the Sharingan, even in battle, even in trial and terror, even to protect our loved ones. My brother, who has never fought, who was never trained in the killing arts, who never intentionally harmed another human being, awakened the gift of our clan when our parents forbade him to ever see his true love, again. Tobirama-sensei would’ve been proud of my brother’s Will of Fire.” Kagami bowed deeply again, his forehead touching the table. His voice was slightly muffled. “On behalf of my brother, Uchiha Hiroaki, I formally give permission for him to marry. I humbly request that Tsume-sama, guardian of Shinchuu and head of the Inuzuka clan, also grant the same permission to Shinchuu.”

Oh. Wooooow. The ceremonial outfit wasn’t just for show. Kagami really was representing the voice of someone who, historically and culturally, had never been allowed to speak up. It made her feel ashamed for being such a lousy Clan Head. Uchiha Kagami was a way better guardian for his brother than she was for Shinchuu.

Tsume wished the floor would open up beneath her. “It’s not…” She wished that Danzo or Enkan or Juubi or _anyone_ would crash into her house as a distraction. “I mean…” Was it too much for Juubi to go on a rampage through the town square – it could be the stallion-Juubi, or even the legendary-Juubi, just so long as it provided a decent distraction. She yanked on her hair, hoping the pain would help her think more clearly. It only made her throbbing headache worse. “Inuzuka women don’t get married! It hasn’t been done as long as we’ve been a maternal clan!”

Which, if she had her clan history math right, was well over three centuries. Of all the traditions that Tsume had been willing to pitch off to the side and declare null and void, marriage hadn’t been one of them. She was fairly sure she didn’t like the idea of other clans thinking that they could just expect that an Inuzuka woman would leave her clan to join another. Tsume had noticed from the time she was very young and could smell the difference, in too many civilian and too many ninja clans, that the wives were frequently considered little more than chattel to men. Inuzuka women were Pack, they were Family. Even their ninken, long considered partners, weren’t _property._ On the other hand, ten years of daily letter writing… “Besides,” Tsume added weakly, “how likely is it that Chumon is going to allow this? He’s got even bigger stick up his ass than Fugaku.”

From the way Kagami raised an eyebrow at her, Tsume realized she probably shouldn’t have said that so bluntly. With a hint of sly mirth, he said, “Time heals many wounds, even wounded pride. Aside from that, Chumon-sama adores my lovely Mikoto-chan – probably more than his own sons. She is so excited about planning a wedding for her beloved uncle that she has roped Chumon-sama into paying for the entire thing.”

Gosh – how much did weddings cost? “The, uh, entire thing?”

“Oh yes. Including a fully-funded honeymoon to the Hidden Village of Hot Springs. My darling Mikoto-chan has convinced Chumon-sama that this is all a good practice for her own wedding, whenever she decides she’s ready to settle down with Fugaku-kun.”

Tsume was impressed. She and her team had done an escort mission to and from the Hidden Village of Hot Springs six months ago. It wasn’t much of a Hidden Village anymore – their academy only graduated about five to eight genin a year – but it sure was a really swanky destination for lovers. They left the place in a haze of hormones and a collection of inappropriate toys to try out. Kokoro and Kushina had gained a far greater depth of education, and appreciation for Tsume willing to take a one (okay, six or seven) for the team, and Sakumo had failed miserably at convincing the team that orgies were forbidden from all missions henceforth, no matter how dire the situation, until he was at least seventy years old, and oh spirit of the Sage of Six Paths preserve him, Kokoro-chan’s brothers were going to _kill_ him before he even had time to update his final will and testament.

She thought about Shinchuu, with her tear-stained face and trembling hands. She thought of how full of happiness Shinchuu was, especially after her picnics with Hiroaki. Tsume also, very briefly, thought of Hiderime and Sakumo and what could’ve been possible, in another world where clan laws and culture might’ve been different. “I will…” She paused, trying to roll the words around in her aching brain before speaking, so she could be sufficiently mature about this, and also so she wouldn’t have to find someone like Danzo to pin Oyubi down when she found out what Tsume had decided. “I will give Shinchuu the permission to _choose_ to marry. She is Inuzuka. She may not _want_ to marry. However, if she wants to leave the clan compound, make her own home and territory with Uchiha Hiroaki and pledge monogamy forever more to him without an actual wedding, that is also her choice, which I give permission for. And your brother doesn’t need to ask _my_ permission. This is between him and Shinchuu. Like, I’m fourteen years old. I can’t be that much more mature than them.” Two adults nearly in their forties didn’t need a teenager like Tsume telling them whether or not they were mature enough to love each other. That just seemed kind of stupid, when they had been loyal to each other longer than Tsume had even been alive.

Gosh, a letter every day for ten years. That was a lot of writing. That was commitment, right there.

The sunshine-smile that lit up Kagami’s face was breathless in its joy. “I thank you for giving my brother permission to fulfill his dream.” He bowed deeply, but Tsume suspected that this time, it was more for hiding the tears in his eyes. “I'm not surprised that my mother or Uncle Obito didn’t became the head of our clan after Uchiha Madara defected from Konoha. The remaining clan elders voted to have a different branch of the family take over the Head. I’m sure that if my mother or Uncle Obito had become Clan Head, Oyubi-san would’ve been assassinated as a young baby.” He straightened up. “I feel it’s only fair to warn you that if this is a successful pregnancy, Chumon-sama is unlikely to ignore this child. Oyubi-san, even without ever awakening her Sharingan, has proven that Hiroaki’s offspring is very likely to become a … fine … warrior…” His voice trailed off as his eyes narrowed and scent flared with suspicion. Tsume tried to look anywhere that wasn’t his face, but it was too late. “ _She_ _did_?!”

Tsume coughed. Sometimes, her face had a big, fat mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How long has Oyubi-san had the Sharingan?”

Tsume clapped her hands over her ears. “I can’t hear you! Lalalalalala!”

Kagami pried Tsume’s hands away from her ears. “Does she even know how to use it, or is she ignoring it?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Tsume flailed her arms. “ _I’m_ not even supposed to know! It’s just that…” Well, of all the (official) Uchiha, Kagami was the one who knew just how sensitive her nose was, and the most likeliest to understand her explanation. “Look, there’s a difference in the Uchiha scent before, and after, the Sharingan awakens. The scent shifts, like it’s stepping off to the side and casting a larger shadow, if that makes any sense. And Oyubi’s scent changed, in the Second War. She never told me. I don’t think she’s told anyone.” Except maybe her ANBU Captain, and Danzo was as tight-lipped as Oyubi, and if there was one thing that Tsume had realized with the circus, not all secrets had an odor.

Kagami released her wrists, and rubbed his forehead. He closed his eyes in thought for a moment. “My clan has always chosen to be hands-off with Oyubi-san. That was the choice Chumon-sama had made when he officially refused to acknowledge the possibility that she has Uchiha blood. As her uncle by blood _and_ Head of Internal Affairs, I cannot simply ignore what I now know. However, I can assure you that this will remain with me, only. If she has awakened the Sharingan, I am obliged to provide her some important education.”

“Like what?”

He studied her for a long breath. “Well, since you are _her_ clan head and seeing as how she’s _your_ Second, I suppose that I should also warn _you_ about the Curse of Hatred.”


End file.
